Abigail Williams In The Crucible

In Arthur Miller's play The Crucible Abigail Williams, an unmarried orphan in the Massachusetts town of Salem, incessantly grows more jealous, her desire for vengeance only grows stronger, and her selfishness escalates. She repeatedly lies to save herself by denying her involvement in witchcraft. Abigail's Jealousy of Elizabeth Proctor intensifies in attempt to realize her desire for Elizabeth's husband John Proctor. In order to save herself she accuses the innocent, without any sense of ethical violation. Abigail proves to be a selfish antagonist in The Crucible that shows no sense of right and wrong.

Abigail was once found dancing in the woods with many of the other girls. After the girls were caught, Abigail was in fear of her life because she knew that if someone else was not blamed, she would be accused and killed. Abigail Williams tried everything to avoid being blamed. She accuses others to escape punishment and persecution. Also, she accuses the people for the witch hunts because of jealousy. Abigail wants to continue the affair, even though John Proctor tried to tell her that the affair is over, but she desperately tried to keep the romance alive. John Proctor states, “Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But I will cut off my hand before I’ll ever reach for you again” (Miller 23). Next, Abigail’s cunning manner causes fear in the girl’s mind. She slaps Betty for pretending because she does not want anybody to know about the witch hunt. Furthermore, she controls the girls and manipulates Danforth by telling lies. Abigail is culpable for the Salem Tragedy.

Abigail Williams, while on the journey of adultery, seems to of already carefully positioned her name in the devil’s book of self-conceited, merciless, and vindictive individuals that roams this Earth. No one's back holds an off limits sign when it comes to her grabbing a knife. Some may say that Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, is dictated by a whore’s vengeance. While there’s some truth to this argument, I would counter that Abigail, the main antagonist, motives are beyond this. Maintaining her position of a victim to entrap anyone who dares cross her path is the premise upon which I build this counterargument. Abigail, not only abandons her hopeless relationship with John Proctor in the end, but continues the travesties against the people of Salem before and after John’s imprisonment.

In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, Miller demonstrated that it was Abigail’s flaws- lust, jealousy, and mendacity- that led her to be responsible the most for the tragedy of the witch-hunt in Salem. The Crucible focuses of the finding of young girls and a slave messing around in the woods, trying to conjure spirits from the dead. Rather than admit to their actions and face the consequences, the girls accuse everyone else of the crimes they were guilty of. Abigail Williams is the person who caused much of the drama in this story. She bears much responsibility for everyone meeting with Tituba in the woods. Once Parris discovers this meeting, Abigail attempts to keep her actions a secret because it would possibly reveal her affair with Proctor. Abigail lies to cover up her affair with proctor, and to stop the charges of witchcraft in order to prevent the terrible punishments that go along with the accusations.

As the plot of the story develops many people are put into jail and even killed because of Abigail's word of mouth to the highest court judge in the land Danforth. She is constantly claiming witchcraft on anyone and anything that attempts to strip her of her power or stand in her way. For example, John Proctor later in the story gets mad at Abigail fro trying to throw his wife in jail. So he goes to Danforth knowingly and tells him that the girls are faking. Danforth is baffled by this; he refuses to believe it, because if he does, then all these people will have died under his name. So knowing this, John Proctor brings a girl named Mary Warren and

Abigail Williams from The Crucible is more despicable than Mayella Ewell from To Kill a Mockingbird because of her malicious intent, proper upbringing, and the severity of the consequences of her actions.

Patty Jenkins, an American film director and screenwriter wrote,“Every villain has their belief system that makes perfect sense to them.” This quote is reminiscent of Abigail Williams, a character in The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller. In Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, four girls were caught doing witchcraft. The girls accused other innocents of witchcraft, so they would not be framed for it. Due to the girl's actions, many of them, accused were hanged to death. Abigail Williams was a villain in The Crucible.

Abigail then accuses Mary of using witchcraft to hurt her. Mary protests, and eventually blames Proctor to get her out of trouble. Referring to Proctor, she says, “He come at me by night and every day to sign, to sign, to—My name, he want my name. ‘I’ll murder you,’ he says, ‘if my wife hangs! We must go and overthrow the court,’ he says!”

Fear in control During the 1600s the fear of witches arose in Salem. This made people doubtful about the love of God people with ‘bad reputation’ had. In the 1950s people questioned the loyalty of citizens towards the United States and the uprising accusations of the being communist. The use of an allegory can be used as “a story in which people, things and events have a meaning often instructive (Agnes 17).”

The play the Crucible, by Miller is aplay about the salem witch trials. One of the characters Abigail Williams is a girl who grew up without parents. Her parents got killed in an indian attach when she was just a young girl. Since abigail is motivated by power,her decision to execute what she thanks are witches create hysteria in the town by the end of the play.

In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, Miller demonstrated that it was Abigail Williams’s flaws- lust, mendacity, and jealousy that led her to be mostly responsible for most of the tragedy of the witch-hunt in Salem. I believe that if Abigail would not have been overcome with lust and jealousy and had the ability to lie that easily, that most of the tragedy would have not occurred. Abigail was, in my opinion, the leader of the girls and their lies. Had she not been there as the head of the girls, the girls probably would not have continued on with the lies. In the small town of Salem, Massachusetts everything appears to be normal until some of the young girls of the town begin acting strange.

The first lie we see with her she is when she says she didn’t sleep with John Proctor, but she does because she admits it to him. …I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart….” What Abigail means when she says this is that John Proctor literally woke her from her sleep and in retrospect put “knowledge” of what being with someone was like “in her heart”. Yet another lie from Abigail is of witchcraft and all the people she claimed did it. ...”I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand—I saw Sarah Good (Betty’s hands appear above headboard raised toward the heaven.) with the Devil! I saw Good Osburn with the devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!” These were just a few people that Abigail blames for witchcraft later you see many more people being accused of witchcraft by her and the others girls. To sum it up Abigail is a compulsive liar; she will lie and lie until she realizes her lying has finally gotten out of control and then she will just try to run away from

“...Abigail Williams, seventeen, enters- a strikingly beautiful girl, an orphan, with an endless capacity for dissembling.” Dissembling means to conceal one’s true feelings or motives, almost like a disguise of your true intentions. Correspondingly, Abigail’s aforementioned ability for dissembling is very appropriate as she is the most to blame for the witch trials and deaths of the accused in The Crucible.

During a time of social unrest in the Crucible, people are more inclined to protect their reputation by lying to also evade death.

Abigail Williams seeks a way to escape the truth of what she was doing in the woods, but the other girls know what really went on. Abigail knows this and becomes a threatening, evil character. When the girls were caught in the forest, they were actually conjuring spirits but Abigail would only admit to dancing. Abigail even drank blood in attempt to kill Elizabeth Proctor. She has threatened to hurt the other girls involved if they do anything to go against her and tell the truth about what really happened. ".....Let any of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other thing , and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring with me a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it....."(20) Reverend Parris does figure out that they were conjuring spirits, but as soon as he