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Elements of Good and Evil in The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Good Essays

The play, The Crucible, is a fireball of guilt, evil, and good compiled into one magnification. It is a play with tremendous feelings, with many inside twists hidden in the archives of the true story. It is a play with emotional feelings; feelings of anger, hate, and evil, yet also feelings of goodness, and pureness. Undeniably, The Crucible is a play illustrating good versus evil. The principal characters, Abigail Williams, John Proctor, Ann Putnam and Marry Warren all contain within them elements of good and evil.

The play contained many scenarios of good versus evil, and the characters that generally possessed these feelings and intentions. But it must be understood that there were the intentions, the incentives, and …show more content…

Of course the people she accuses are actually innocent, but she has the ability to manipulate people into believing that she is doing good. This again is evil.

The center of good can be labeled as John Proctor. He is considered the hero of the story, because he fits into the points that make up the hero of a story. Proctor is a heroic martyr at the end of the play, when he falsely admits that he was with Satan all a long. He then refuses to tell the judge and accuse anyone of being with Satan too like Abigail did. Therefore he may be considered a martyr, for dying for a cause of saving the lives of other innocent people. John Proctor also tries to defend his wife, and attempts to make the judge realize how Abigail is manipulating him. This is where the conflict arises between good and evil. It is survival of the fittest. Who will survive at the end, Abigail Williams or John Proctor? This is the main battle of the story.

John Proctor is not a saint in this story either. He does possess some fragments of evil in his soul. His intentions are to do good and that justice is served, but he wants this so badly, that he also turns to evil incentives to kill Abigail (subliminally for what she is doing). At the latter part of the play, he tries to use evil to counter evil by saying he was with the devil. His intentions are to do good, but that is really against the Puritan Code, and hence is considered evil. One more fault that

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