No matter what you may do to stop yourself from lying, you’ll never get away. Lying is just an characteristic of human nature that is always going to happen. In the play, The Crucible, many of the characters lie and are very dishonest, each of them having a different reasons. The straight forward Puritan idea often makes the characters to bargain their honesty because they feel like the only other thing they can do is lie.
Abigail and John Proctor did have an affair, but Proctor denies that there ever was anything between them. "Wipe it out of your mind. We never touched, Abby." Proctor, knew quite well that John Proctor and Abigail did have have an affair but denies it in a dishonest manner. He does not want to uncover his dishonesty, because
The last thing Proctor knew to do, was admitting to having an affair with Abigail. John thought this could ruin Abigail’s credibility, while also sacrificing his own. Danforth needed proof of adultery, so he brought in Elizabeth. John said to Danforth that she will back his story because she never lies. Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished, and Elizabeth lied and said no affair happened, hoping to protect John.
There is no such thing as a perfect liar. In this book many characters lie to try to avoid confrontation with others and so they can get away with things. This is exactly how Abigail acted throughout the story in which ways that can be easily related to a crucible. A crucible is a pot that can withstand great heat, so it is used for melting other metals.
Lying: Is it good or bad? The book The Crucible by Arthur Miller is set in 1692 during the Salem witch trials. During the trials, it was common for people to lie in court so the people they loved and themselves would not get killed. Abigail Williams-the main character who is 17 but wants to marry Mr. Procter who is 30 and has a wife and 3 sons - lies over and over again about Mr. Proctor's wife being a witch and so much more just for revenge all because she can't marry Mr. Procter, but Mr. Procter isn't totally innocent either. Mr. Procter had an affair with Abigail, catalyzing the whole trail.
The Salem Witch Trials were a time of frenzied zealotry and paranoia, and in such times, most logic seems to go out the window. One fallacy in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is the fallacy of the false alternative. It is exemplified during the witch proceedings when Francis Nurse presents a paper of signatories declaring their good opinion of his wife. Danforth arrests all of the signatories for questioning. At Francis’ objection that he has promised that no hurt would come to these people Danforth replies “No old man, you have not hurt these people if they are of good conscience. But you must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against this court, there be no road in between.” (Miller 87). The conversation is merely a variation on the classic false alternative, “You’re either with us, or you’re against us.” The trouble with that logic is that Francis was merely trying to defend his wife from almost certain death. He was not trying to attack the court as Parris states, nor was he really for the court. In disproving this logic we can look at Francis as a counterexample: Not against the court, but not supportive of the court’s actions
Imagine this, what would it be like to end up in jail because of a rumor? That is what happened during McCarthyism and the Red Scare, people were arrested for rumors of being communist and put in jail when they really weren't. The authors of USHistory.org mentions how the government steps up in the investigations. In this article the authors are talking about how they stepped up their role in the investigation. It states, “The U.S Congress created a committee that sought to find “Un-American activities” in the hollywood film industry” (USHistory.org). The U.S Congress thought there were “Un-American” things happening in the hollywood industry so they created a committee to investigate more. The people who were accusing others of being communists were allowed to go free. With all of this happening it caused others to get fired from their jobs in local governments. Another article states, “McCarthey later gave Congress the name of the State Department employees the he claimed were traitors” (McCarthey). McCarthy used this to scare the people, he then took advantage of it, and turned in the traitors to Congress. Not long after the government acted on the list of traitors which led people to getting fired or jailed. These articles are very similar because of the many rumors causing deaths, and problems with other people.
In society, we are blind to the lies that are taking place around us every day. Small lies, big lies, lies right in front of our face, and we are oblivious to almost all of it. This is shown really well in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Throughout the play, which takes place during the witch trials that took place in Salem, lies make up a big portion of the plot. Some of these types of lies that are used are described very well in Stephanie Ericsson’s essay The Ways We Lie. These variations of lies amplify the outrage created, through McCarthyism, and the Salem Witch trials that take place in the play The Crucible.
“At this point of the play John Proctor has admitted to having an affair with Abigail. He wife doesn’t know that he has admitted to the affair, Elizabeth is brought to the court and question about abigail and
In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, it seems as though almost every character lies at least one time throughout the story. Dishonesty plays many roles throughout The Crucible, the whole story is based on lies. In act 1 when Betty wakes up she yells at Abigail, they yell at each other but most importantly Abigail lies. Abigail and Betty argue and some pretty important things are said.
In society, we are blind to lies that are taking place around us everyday. Small lies, big lies, lies right in front of our face, and we are oblivious to almost all of it. This is shown really well in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Throughout the play, which takes place during the witch trials that took place in Salem, lies make up a big portion of the plot. Some of these types of lies that are used are described very well in Stephanie Ericsson’s essay The Ways We Lie. These variations of lies amplify the outrage created, through McCarthyism, and the Salem Witch trials that take place in the play The Crucible.
John Proctor also lies throughout The Crucible. Although he has come clean to his wife, Elizabeth, about his love affair with Abigail, it is still a secret to the rest of the citizens of Salem. John is severely ashamed of his act of adultery, and has trouble admitting it to himself. When Elizabeth suggests early on,”I think you must tell him[Hale], John” (Miller 67), Proctor evades admitting the truth to Reverend Hale of his affair even though it could have been a valid excuse for the Proctor family’s lack of attendance at church and John’s inability to say the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” In Act III, when John finally is forced to admit his clandestine affair with Abigail to the court, nobody believes him. Because John has waited so long to confess his affair, it just looks like a poor attempt to save him and Elizabeth from the indictments. If John had divulged the secret of his affair earlier on, people might scorn him for his sin, but he would have evaded the allegations of witchcraft.
People are often told that lying is the wrong thing to do; it is evil, inhumane, and overall terrible. Despite this fact, lying has been shown to hand people multiple benefits. These benefits can be anything from getting out of doing house chores to looking cool in front of classmates. Because of this, many people use this form of deception to remove themselves from unwanted problems in the community. The Crucible, a play written Arthur Miller, portrays a disrupted society where people are accused of witchcraft for any abnormal activity. The accused witches are either forced to “confess” to their involvement with witchcraft or be executed in the gallows. The characters in the play display to the readers that lying provides protection towards people in different ways.
“While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive.” This clear and concise quote was expressed by Sissela Bok, a Swedish-American philosopher and the daughter of two Nobel Prize winners. See deception is a concept that is practically glorified lying to grasp an advantage upon something. In The Crucible we see many depictions of deception. Nearly all coming from Abigail.
Have you ever felt so burdened or overlooked that it leads you to deception? How can one readily react to these feelings, and what can be done if we find ourselves submerged in duplicity far beyond any point of return? In order to better answer these questions, one must first look to both literature and history for demonstrations of such conceptions. Just one example of this being that of the well-known play and movie, The Crucible. As first written in 1953 by Arthur Miller, The Crucible is the powerful production and retelling of the erratic events which took place in the town of Salem during the late 1600’s. The story follows a group of young girls who, after being discovered in the woods dancing, decides it is best to charge the honest as partakers in witchcraft; and instill turmoil and distraction not just within Salem, but the entire region as well. One of the girls guilty of such accusations is that of Mary Warren; the tentative, disingenuous housemaid of John and Elizabeth Proctor, who during the progression of the story, felt ashamed of her actions and took the sand to confess not just her own, but all the girls’ fabricated behavior. However as the confession wore on and testimonies denying her statement true came forward, Mary ultimately gave to the pressure and returned to her previous actions of fraud and deception. Doings which only compliment her many viable flaws of a naive judgement, weak minded demeanor, and inability to stay true to her word; and that
“History repeats itself, but in such a cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.” (Sydney J. Harris). Lies and deceit are known to be misleading, inaccurate, or false but we may not see them in action because of the source. In the Salem Witch Trials, there is a great deal of controversy and uncertainty because of lies for vengeance and a specific hatred of an individual by another. In cases like this there is always two sides. Wrong and right, lawful and unlawful, loyalty and life. Mob mentality and chaos breeds quickly and panic-stricken decisions are made with little thought or solid evidence.
The Crucible is a play written in 1953 by Arthur Miller. It is based off of the 1662 Salem witch trials written as a parallel between this time period and the Red Scare, the time period in which he was living. There are many topics explored throughout the play, but the most important is hypocrisy, which can be seen in several characters.