The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Fear can cause people to make bad decisions causing the situation to worsen. According to the play The Crucible is about a group of girls who were caught practicing witchcraft who were forced to tell lies about the devil forcing them to participate in villainous actions and then forced to name those involved in the fear of being hanged by the court. Head of the group was a young woman named Abigail Williams, who was infatuated with a married man and determined to get rid of his wife. In the play The Crucible, Arthur Miller personifies Abigail Williams as a manipulative character as seen when she successfully manages to convince the court that Elizabeth and other innocent citizens work with the devil and how she controlled the group of girls into pretending to have encounters with evil spirits of the accused. Arthur Miller wrote the play as an allegory of the McCarthyism in the 1950s. Focusing on the inconsistencies of the Salem witch trials in seventeenth-century in Salem Massachusetts, and the extreme behavior that can result from dark desires.

TV shows and Movies with a focus on cliques, either in high school or in the work force, are popular in our society today. For instance the movie Mean Girls is about a teenage girl moving to a new school and being recruited into a high school clique. In this clique, the members exhibit the behaviors of people experiencing the psychological phenomenon, Groupthink. Groupthink is the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility. There are eight symptoms of Groupthink- Invulnerability, Rationale, Morality, Stereotypes, Pressure, Self-Censorship, Unanimity, and Mindguards. Groupthink has also taken place in our history a a country. The play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller is about a the real-life Salem Witch Trials that happened in 1692 - 1693, in Salem, Massachusetts. Some symptoms of Groupthink found in the Crucible are Rationale, Pressure, and Self-Censorship.

In 1692, these characteristics would make the society see you as lower than others. Most girls are married by the time they are a teenager, and in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts the people were not used to such an awful turn of events such as the murder of a child's parents. In addition to this unfortunate baggage that Abigail walks with, Elizabeth is subtly stating to the townspeople that Abigail is a women of low morals. This feel of being looked down upon for multiple reasons is completely demoralizing. Which makes it quite easy to understand that Abigail has a hunger for power and to be a part of a higher social class.

Abigail Williams is a vindictive, canny, diabolical child notoriously known for callously crying out many partisans as a reflection of her selfish, indignant desires, and it is to these reasons that Abigail is for blame for the anarchy that drove Salem into chaos. Arthur Miller has strategically positioned the readers to perceive Abigail in this negative connotation as he purposely

The Crucible is a dramatic story based on the witch hysteria that occurred during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.(Miller 1124) The villainous, troubled Abigail Williams is one of the major characters in this novel. Abigail becomes very powerful throughout the story and defends herself from her own actions by blaming and ruining the lives of many in Salem. In The Crucible, Abigail shows her true motives of being the antagonist in the story, shows her real character and personality traits, and can personally connect with the writer of this essay.

Page 1 of 3Hai Nguyen John Proctor and the McCarthyism “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller illustrates the reflection of the anti-communist hysteria in the United States known as McCarthyism. Miller uses the character John Proctor as a force in demonstrating the way lives were destroyed by McCarthyism. Throughout the story, while Proctor is respected in the community, he has conflict secretly with many people as well as himself. John Proctor is a perfect character because the readers are able to view him as a victim in the society where McCarthyism took place. He is also an adulterer, husband of Elizabeth, and knows what is happening in and outside of the Salem society. Proctor was having a conflict with his wife, Elizabeth Proctor. Elizabeth did not trust John because he had an affair with Abigail Williams. Elizabeth was supposed to trust John, but she refused to because he said he was alone with Abigail for a moment. John cannot say or argue against Elizabeth because of his guilt:” Because it speaks deceit, and I am honest! But I will plead no more! I see how your spirit twists around the single error of my life, and I will never tear it free!” Elizabeth tried to make John feel guilt, so John wanted to make sure she understood her cold nature may have prompted his cheating. He also has conflict with Abigail Williams which is his mistress. John Proctor was so angry because Abigail accused his wife to witchcraft. She sent Mary Warren with a puppet that has needle inside its

The movie, The Crucible, was produced in 1996 and portrayed the dramatized play written by Arthur Miller in 1953. The movie story deals with the Salem, Massachusetts hysteria in 1692 with an irrational fear of the devil. Witch hunts and false accusations resulted. Trials took place and resulted in the hanging and associated death of more than 20 people and the false imprisonment of many others.

Abigail Williams, a seventeen year old orphan being raised by her uncle Revered Parris, is a pivotal character in bringing about irrational fear in the people of Salem through her false accusations and struggle for acceptance. In the beginning of the play, Reverend Parris is questioning Abigail Williams on the topic of whether

In the Puritan society, they did not have a mayor nor any sort of traditional democratic leader. Instead, the pastor of their church was their political leader. Abigail is a young teen who is in love with a married man, John Proctor and would do about almost anything to be with him. One night, she ended up having an affair with Proctor and from then on, she could not get him out of her head. Living in a Puritan society, it was forbidden to commit adultery especially with a married man.

What begins as a slight concealment of the truth can often run rampant, quickly becoming a situation that none could ever anticipate or control. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Abigail Williams is a manipulative and deceitful young woman who generates a panic in the Salem community with accusations of witchcraft. Abigail plays a key role in the story as an adulterer and an influence over the younger girls in the trials. As the story progresses, she employs devious methods to create drama and further heighten the tension and unease in the town.

The Puritans were one of the first set Europeans to come to North America; they made several colonies around the modern-day New York and Massachusetts area. They were infamous for starting the Salem Witch Trials; a period of 2 weeks in which several people, and two dogs, were executed for supposedly being witches or being affiliated with witchcraft. This is the time in which “The Crucible” takes place. Knowing this fact is the key to understanding how Abigail is pulling the strings the whole time. The Puritan way was a fair, simple, and orderly way of living: just wake up every day, do your work, eat dinner, and go to sleep again. This sounds a lot like the modern day way of living, except for the fact that the Puritans had a very strict religious theocracy that would not allow quite a few things ranging from going to church every Sunday to not being able to write fiction novels or stories. All of this was because the Puritans believed that God had a list of about 100,000 people that would be allowed into heaven, what happens to the others is never specified, but it can be implied that Hell awaits them. As a result, these people had to be as true to the doctrine as much as possible to be on this 100,000 people list to get into heaven. One act of

One of the numerous things that a man can never outrun is his reputation. Several authors throughout the history of literature have used this characteristic of citizens as major conflicts in stories and plays. One such author is Arthur Miller, playwright for the famous 1950’s play, The Crucible. In Miller’s The Crucible, reputation plays an influential role in the outcome of the play. A major portion of the population is led to plead guilty in order to save their reputation, have their reputation ruined by pleading innocent, or ruin their reputations so as to protect others. Several of these characters are Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, and John Proctor.

In ancient Greece, Aristotle formulated a new format for drama where there would be a beginning, middle, and an end. As years went by, this format or structure became known as the five-act play. This structure contains five parts that allow a smooth transition throughout the play. These five parts include the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the denouement or resolution. Although Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, only contains four acts, it can be analyzed through a combination of acts into a five-act structure.

The Salem Witch Trials was period in history that was known for its innocent slaughter

In the society that people live in, there are many among whom are despicable and there are also those who have morality. The Crucible is a play that takes place in Massachusetts in the spring of 1962; based on the true story of the Salem Witch trials, where many of the people in the town of Salem turned against each other because of their belief of witchcraft. Since Salem was deeply religious and believed in the words of the Almighty God, most of the people considered witchcraft as evil. Similar to the characters by Miller, his characters reflects on Kohlberg’s stages of development; for example in stage one of development, “We obey authority figures in order to avoid punishment” (Kohlberg), that reflects on the ideals of the people of Salem against their religion which they take very seriously. They must obey God and go to church every Sunday in order to go to Heaven rather than Hell. One character that the author introduces in the play is Abigail Williams, a young teenage girl that once held responsible for the well-being of a group of other innocent and naive girls in Salem but certain unforgivable acts caused her to become a cheater, and a liar. In the play, The Crucible written by Arthur Miller, the most vice character is Abigail Williams because she stole all the money of Reverend Parris, she had a love relationship with John Proctor, and she lied about many things just to get away to protect herself.