The Crucible

John Proctor suddenly and dramatically reveals his adultery to the court in Act III of The Crucible with the words: I have known her, sir. I have known her. This rather euphemistic way of...

In Act Three, Danforth questions Mary Warren and Abigail Williams in court about Abigail's testimony against Elizabeth Proctor as well as Mary's new accusations that Abigail and the other girls are...

John Proctor is a different man by the end of The Crucible, as his character evolves from a self-loathing sinner to an upright, moral man. At the beginning of the play, John is intent on hiding his...

In the play, Abigail Williams is a crafty, insensitive young woman with an "endless capacity for dissembling." She is primarily responsible for spreading the witchcraft hysteria that consumes Salem...

At the beginning of the play, Abigail lies to her uncle when he asks what she was doing in the woods with the girls. Abigail lies by saying, "We did dance, uncle, and when you leaped out of the...

Abigail Williams and John Proctor are former lovers who engaged in an affair seven months before the start of the play. Abigail is John's former servant; she was dismissed from her duties after...

In act 3 of The Crucible, John Proctor goes to the court in order to free his wife. During this testimony, he admits a number of things to Danforth and all those present. First, he says Mary Warren...

Prior to act 3, Reverend Hale had been doing his own independent investigation to examine whether or not the accused civilians are capable of colluding with the devil. His independent investigation...

In The Crucible, the last line in the play spoken by Elizabeth Proctor is, He have his goodness now, God forbid I take it from him. What Elizabeth means is that her husband, John Proctor, has...

Initially, John Proctor decides to offer a false confession and sign the document in hopes of saving his life. Proctor recognizes that he is a sinner and refuses to "mount the gibbet like a saint."...

At the end of act 3, after it has been made clear that Danforth is either unable or unwilling to discern the liars from the honest people, John Proctor declares that "God is dead!" And, further, he...

In act 4 of Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, a fictionalized dramatization of the Salem witch trials of 1692, Reverend Samuel Parris tells Deputy Governor Danforth, who was presiding over the...

In act 3, John Proctor forces Mary Warren to travel into Salem with him and confess the truth about the proceedings by telling the court officials that Abigail Williams and the girls are frauds....

John Proctor is prepared, albeit reluctantly, to confess that he's guilty of witchcraft. This is a completely false charge, of course, but under the circumstances, John feels he has no choice....

There are numerous conflicts throughout Arthur Miller's classic play The Crucible, which heighten the drama and highlight the themes of hysteria, corruption, and deceit. The primary Man vs. Self...

Abigail Williams makes it abundantly clear to the other girls that if they ever open their mouths about what they got up to in the forest that night, they'll be in serious trouble. To be specific,...

"Hysteria" is a term that can be used with varying degrees of precision, from a psychiatric diagnosis at one end of the spectrum to any type of general panic at the other. In the vaguest sense, all...

John Proctor has come to a point in his persecution that he knows the time for pretense has ended. He knows that he is a sinner; he has committed adultery and lied about it. And in his reluctance...

In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Judge Danforth is primarily interested in one person: himself. We get our first clue about that in the notes introducing the judge. He is a grave man in his...

In act 1, scene 1 of Arthur Miller's play about the Salem witch trials, The Crucible, Reverend Samuel Parris, Salem's minister for the past three years, says that he's sent for Rev. John Hale, a...

The argument can be made that the girls are most to blame for the Salem witch trials in The Crucible. Before the start of the play, Abigail Williams, Betty, Mercy Lewis, Mary Warren, Ruth Putnam,...

The most obvious reason Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible (or anything else, really) is because he had a story to tell. Without that, he would not have been inspired to write. It is true, however,...

Mary Warren undergoes a significant change in demeanor in act 2 of The Crucible, after she has participated in the court proceedings of the witch trials. Though we don't see much of Mary in act 1,...

The Crucible is chock full of so many interesting and complicated characters and a number of compelling themes that your options for addressing it via a thesis statement abound. You could examine...

In The Crucible, the Reverend Parris has a narrow range of concerns, most of which are related to his own safety, status, and prosperity. His most humane and creditable concern is with the health...

John Proctor has lost everything, but the one thing he has left is his good name, his reputation. As John says himself, he's already given the authorities his soul, what he won't do is give them...

John Proctor presents what he calls a "testament" to Justice Danforth, saying "the people signing it declare their good opinion of Rebecca and my wife, and Martha Corey." He then says the people...

Whether or not Arthur Miller had this specific idea in mind when he was writing The Crucible, one of the major messages of the play is certainly that a crisis for the community is a golden...

The main conflict between John Proctor and Reverend Parris concerns Parris's fire-and-brimstone sermons and hypocritical nature. John Proctor views Reverend Parris as a cold, superficial man who is...

The following dialogue is given by Abigail Williams and directed at Mary Warren, Betty Parris, and Mercy Lewis: Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and...

The girls were dancing in the woods because they were participating in superstitious rituals with Parris' Barbadian slave, Tituba. In Act 1, Abigail says that, as they danced, "Tituba conjured...

The Proctors's fraught marriage complicates their lives considerably. It's not enough that they somehow have to live with the constant fear whipped up by the witch-hunting hysteria. They must also...

In The Crucible, John Proctor speaks the line in response to a question from Judge Danforth. Already convinced that Proctor is in league with the devil, Danforth is demanding that he confess....

In Arthur Miller's classic play The Crucible, he chronicles the events that transpired during the Salem witch trials in the spring of 1692. Historically, more than two hundred people were accused...

Tituba is depicted as a compassionate, naive woman who is manipulated by Abigail Williams and perpetuates the witchcraft hysteria the moment she recognizes she is the scapegoat. Tituba is Reverend...

In Act Two, Reverend Hale visits John Proctor's home in order to do some independent investigation. When he enters John's home, Reverend Hale mentions that he has come on his own accord because...

"First they came for the Communists, - but I was not a communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, - but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then...

Abigail stabs herself with a needle. She does this in order to cast suspicion on Elizabeth Proctor. If Elizabeth Proctor is convicted of witchcraft, then Elizabeth will be executed. John will...

Giles Corey refuses to answer "aye" or "nay" during his indictment as an attempt to protect the well-being of his family. He cannot be sent to the gallows to hang without an answer. Knowing that...

Abigail, Tituba, and the girls were dancing around a fire that was supporting a boiling pot. Most of them were casting harmless "spells" they had learned from Tituba, but Abigail's spell...

The first instance concerning Thomas Putnam's comments regarding a land dispute occurs in act one. While Thomas Putnam, John Proctor, and Giles Corey are visiting Reverend Parris's home, the men...

In act 1 of The Crucible, Abigail drinks blood as a charm to bring about Elizabeth Proctor's death because she is envious of Elizabeth and desires John Proctor. When Reverend Parris demands to know...

Abigail deflects blame onto Tituba, Reverend Parris's Barbadian slave, near the end of Act One. When Hale asks her what she is hiding and if she's sold her soul to the devil, she points at Tituba,...

In act 3, John Proctor confesses to adultery as a last resort to undermine Abigail, prove the girls are frauds, and put an end to the unjust proceedings. In order to prove this weighty accusation...

In act 1, Reverend Hale, Thomas Putnam, and Reverend Parris interrogate Tituba, who becomes a scapegoat after Abigail Williams accuses her of colluding with the devil and sending her spirit on her...

Hale came to Salem feeling quite confident in his abilities to root out the Devil and force him to let go of good Christians. But as time passes, he becomes less and less confident about...