Abigail Williams And Arthur Miller's The Crucible

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The Crucible is a play set on the historic events of the Salem Witch trials. The Crucible is only based on the events of these trials and is in fact not completely accurate. Miller alters the story line slightly to give the whirl of events a motive. The motive Miller chose to use was an affair between Abigail Williams and John Proctor. This affair lead to ABigail obsessing over JOhn and resulting in dangerous tactics to get what she wants. This is why Abigail Williams is the one to mostly blame. Abigail is the one to mostly blame for the events of the Crucible. Abigail’s affair with John is partly what started the whole thing and is what caused it to get as bad as it did. Abigail became obsessed with John. She convinced herself that she …show more content…
John would never leave his wife and in that time husbands didn’t leave their wives. They only remarried if their spouse had died. So Abigail decides that the only way to be with John is to eliminate his wife. Abigail forces Tituba to conjure spirits for her and to make a curse that she could drink that would murder Elizabeth. When this didn’t work she resorted to other matters. The night Elizabeth was arrested Cheever, an official of the court, declared to her and her husband that “the girl, the Williams girl, Abigail Williams, sir. She sat to dinner in Reverend Parris’s house tonight, and without a word nor warnin’ she falls to the floor. Like a struck beast, he says, and screamed a scream that a bull would weep to hear. ANd he goes to save her, and stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, he draw a needle out. And demandin’ of her how she come to be so stabbed, she testify it were your wife’s familiar spirit pushed it in.” (Miller, 172). This was enough “evidence” to arrest Elizabeth and would have resulted in her death if she were not …show more content…
She threatens the other girls that danced in the woods with her that if they spoke a word she would take care of them. Abigail threatening declared to them that “let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you, and you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!” (Miller, 144). These threats scare the girls into silence and gives Abigail power over them. Abigail uses the power she has now achieved over the girls to accuse other people of witchcraft. She starts with people who would be easy to accuse like Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn. This gives her leverage in the court allowing her to escalate to people she truly wanted to be out of her way and that main person was Elizabeth Proctor the wife of John Proctor. Abigail is dangerous and impulsive. These attitudes lead to her acting out in life threatening ways. Abigail is the cause of many deaths. She accuses many people of witchcraft resulting in their deaths just to save her own skin and to cover her own tracks. These actions are why Abigail is the most to blame for the events of the

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