Abigail Williams The Crucible Essay Example For Students

Abigail Williams The Crucible Essay in The Crucible is Abigail. At first sight she might look like a normal, well behaving girl, but as one read further and looks closer at her true character, you can see that she is mean and is not afraid of even killing her enemies. At the very beginning of Act 1, Abigail plays the brave girl in front of her uncle. She behaves like he is expecting her to; she wants to please him. This can be indicated by the following quotations:I would never hurt Betty. I love her dearly.(Pg. 10 | Line 16)My name is good in the village! I will not have it said my name is soiled!(Pg. 12 | Line 15)But as one reads on, one is told that Abigail actually lied as she talked to her uncle. So she is not honest by telling him that there was nothing more. And also by telling her friends Listen, now; if they be questioning us, tell them we danced I told him as much already(Pg. 18 | Line 10)She changes her behavior drastically regarding to her behavior at the beginning of Act 1. By saying, And mark this. Let either of you breath 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.(Pg. 20 | Line 2 ) she shows her evil character as she even threatens her friends that she will harm them when they get in their way. She is also not afraid of blaming everything on Tituba, who she asked for help with conjuring the spirits, by saying, Dont lie! () She comes to me while I sleep; she is always making me dream corruptions!(Pg. 44 | Line 9)As you can see in the paragraphs above, Abigail has a great ability to act, which she uses to blind the people in the village to her real goals. She also has enormous power in manipulating people by using her ability to act. She is power-hungry and is not afraid of destroying every thing that is in her way. Arthur Miller wrote his play, The Crucible, a story about the Salem witch trials, and the panic resulting from it, as an allegory to show people the insanity of the McCarthy hearings. He wrote it as an allegory so that, if tried by McCarthy, he could say, its just a play about the witch trials in Salem. How do you get this communist idea from it? The story illustrates how people react to mass hysteria, created by a person or group of people desiring fame, as people did during the McCarthy hearings. Arthur Miller, acting as a great visionary, warned us that if we did not become aware of history repeating itself, our society would be in danger. At the same time, he had to do this in a matter that would not get him arrested, hence the witch-trial mechanization.