The Crucible

When Mary Warren first appears in The Crucible, the stage notes indicate that she's "seventeen, a subservient, naïve girl." Mary Warren is modeled after the historical Mary Ann Warren, born in...

In some ways, Hale does not change from act 1 to act 3. When Hale arrives in act 1, he is borderline arrogant in his ability to find the Devil's presence in Salem and rid the town of witchcraft. He...

Abigail is a young girl in Puritan Salem, and she lies in order to protect herself. One way to pull textual evidence showing how she is manipulative is to find examples of these lies. When the play...

"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...

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."...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

Reverend Hale changes his position on the witch trials because he is determined to save John Proctor from execution. He becomes convinced that Abigail Williams is a liar in Act III, after she is...

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...

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...

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...

Miller does not go into specific details regarding Abigail Williams and John Proctor's affair, but their brief romance has a profound impact on the play and is a catalyst for the witch trials....

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 the play, Mary Warren is portrayed as a spineless young woman with low self-esteem. Mary Warren is terrified of Abigail Williams and agrees to corroborate her story in act 1 after Abigail...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

Reverend Hale believes that "Theology [...] is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small." He chastises John Proctor for John's apparent lack of conformity to the doctrine of their...

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...

Giles Corey comes to court in ACT III to file a deposition that Thomas Putnam is essentially encouraging his daughter to accuse people of witchcraft so that he can claim their land. When someone is...

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 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....

When Danforth demands that Proctor confess to witchcraft, John Proctor responds that “God is dead” and they will all burn in hell together. He says this because the people of Salem are the ones...

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...

One of the most evident changes in Mary is that she is more assertive. In Act I, when Proctor enters and threatens to beat her, she is much more timid. In Act II, she presents herself as much...

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...

Throughout the play, both characters challenge each other, as Proctor ends up fighting for his life and Reverend Parris does his best to remain in his important position. Initially, John Proctor...

In act 3, John Proctor forces Mary Warren to travel with him to address Salem's court concerning the girls' false testimonies. Mary Warren not only fears repercussions from Abigail and the others...

Rebecca is totally "horrified" that Ann Putnam would send her one surviving daughter, Ruth, to conjure the spirits of her other dead children. However, Mrs. Putnam shouts back, "Let God blame me,...

John Proctor's internal conflict stems from the fact that he is an independent thinker who has consented to live in a society that demands conformity in thought and action. Though Proctor loves his...

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...

Judge Danforth is an incredibly prideful man, as evidenced by the fact that anyone who tries to disprove his judgments of witchcraft is shut down, dismissed, questioned and often arrested. He is a...

John Proctor's internal conflict throughout the play concerns his decision to reveal his infidelity in order to undermine Abigail's psychological hold on the court and community. In the austere...

The literal meaning of a word, phrase or sentence, is its true or normal meaning - its denotation and is in contrast to its figurative or symbolic meaning. In this context, then, what John Proctor...

In Act Three, Mary Warren tells Deputy Governor Danforth that Abigail and the other girls are lying. Danforth then looks at John Proctor and says to him, "We burn a hot fire here; it melts down all...

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...

In Act II Reverend Hale pays a visit to the Proctors farm. Since he is new in town, he has been visiting the homes of the townspeople in order to "test the Christian character of the house." Of...