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The Crucible
Proctor's closing to Act III says a couple of things to the audience. The first and most essential is that Proctor is reaching a point where his statement of dissent cannot be quelled. For a...
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The Crucible
First of all, there is no empirical evidence of any witches at all. Every accusation is from other people, so-called witnesses, and essentially just people pointing fingers. At the beginning of the...
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The Crucible
In terms of direct characterization, before Abigail even speaks, Miller tells us that she is "a strikingly beautiful girl, an orphan, with an endless capacity for dissembling." This "endless...
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The Crucible
Three literary techniques seem inherent in this passage: character development, external conflict, and the use of metaphor. Characters can be developed in several ways, such as through their...
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The Crucible
In my text, the Penguin edition of the play, this quotation of Abigail's is on page 20. She speaks these lines shortly after Mary Warren arrives and immediately after Betty Parris wakes up and...
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The Crucible
John and Elizabeth have a strained, tense relationship, which is a result of John's infidelity and Elizabeth's callous nature. In Act Two, the audience becomes aware that Elizabeth has not fully...
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The Crucible
The quote comes at a particularly intense exchange between husband and wife. Proctor and Elizabeth are at a challenged point in their relationship. Proctor's affair with Abigail has caused a deep...
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The Crucible
Arthur Miller, the author of the play, writes a sort of narrator for this work -- someone who interjects frequently in Act I -- to introduce characters, give the audience background information,...
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The Crucible
There are several arguments that point to different people. 1. Abigail Williams could be worthy of blame. We see in the first Act that she manipulates the girls into helping her lie about what went...
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The Crucible
The governing body of Salem, at the time of the witch trials, was a theocracy. A theocracy is where the law makers of the group (or established colony) are in power based upon their "divine...
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The Crucible
I think that Proctor's power changes over the play as his voice becomes more definite. I don't think that it is accident that Proctor's wish to become invisible and not be involved involves him...
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The Crucible
Hale denouncing the proceedings because of the testimony and evidence against the girls, specifically against Abigail by Proctor, showing that the girls are faking and that witchcraft has nothing...
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The Crucible
To save herself. She knows that the penalty for practicing witchcraft is death by hanging. At first, she sees Tituba as the easiest target, but then things get out of hand. Eventually,...
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The Crucible
Integrity refers to a person's ability to be honest and have high moral values. Rebecca shows that she has these qualities by speaking her mind and not being afraid of what others think of her, as...
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The Crucible
Although Abigail is an important character, John Proctor is the main character because he is the one challenged to make the most important decisions during the course of the play. Early in the...
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The Crucible
There are a great many social issues in this play, and because the play is a metaphorical expression of McCarthyism, the social issues can be interpreted through the lens of two eras: the 1950s,...
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The Crucible
At the beginning of the play, Reverend Hale comes to Salem with a very high opinion of himself and his education. He believes that he knows the way to root out Satan and banish him from the...
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The Crucible
Abigail is very much to blame for the events that take place in The Crucible. Though one could certainly make the case that she's had a difficult life -- life for Puritan girls, especially, was no...
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The Crucible
Miller uses dramatic irony to create anxiety and tension in a critical scene in The Crucible. Dramatic irony occurs when the audience, along with certain characters on stage, is aware of a...
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The Crucible
I think that the extensive stage directions that Miller provides at the start of Act I will help in this analysis. The theocratic tradition of Salem was one in which individual subjugation of...
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The Crucible
Miller's construction of the legal system of Salem is an interesting one. On one level, Miller suggests that part of the reason why men like Danforth and Hathorne are hesitant to view the girls as...
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The Crucible
Miller's play diverges from traditional expository material in that we get a great deal of information on how to interpret the text before a line is ever uttered. For example, Miller flat out...
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The Crucible
I think Proctor definitely embodies these characteristics of a tragic hero, but perhaps some of them more than others. Let's take them one at a time: 1) A belief in his own freedom: Proctor is...
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The Crucible
On the surface, it would seem that Abigail is the primary cause of the accusations, the hysteria, the trials, and everything that leads to Salem's downfall. However, Miller shows that it is the...
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The Crucible
Certainly, the weaker characters are too afraid or simply unwilling to face the truth of the situation in The Crucible. Parris is a clear example. He would rather blame the girls' behavior on the...
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The Crucible
Abigail makes one consistent choice that changes her fate in The Crucible by Arthur Miller--every chance she gets, she chooses to lie rather than tell the truth. While there are plenty of smaller...
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The Crucible
I think that a key insight into how Miller envisions both the first act and the entire drama can be seen in his extensive stage directions which end up operating as more of a background into Salem....
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The Crucible
Cognitive biases play a huge role in The Crucible. Broadly defined, one who engages in cognitive bias has a skewed, irrational, and/or generally incorrect perception about something in the world....
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The Crucible
This is the first time that the audience sees Elizabeth, although we already know some about her. We already know about John's affair, and that he has ended it. We assume that Elizabeth has...
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The Crucible
This play presents a number of conflicts, external and internal. The crisis faced by John Proctor in the final two acts of the play embody both of the external and the internal conflicts of the...
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The Crucible
Mary Warren is an interesting character. She is timid and easily manipulated by John and Abby, but she does stand up for herself at times. Like John, Mary is constantly conflicted by the opposition...
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The Crucible
I think that one immediate similarity between both versions of Proctor was the idea that Proctor is shown to be an outspoken man. In the drama, Proctor does not hold his tongue in terms of how her...
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The Crucible
The social repression in Miller's drama is twofold. On one hand, there is the social repression of adolescence. The entire reason why Abigail and the girls lie is to evade the punishment for...
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The Crucible
The Crucible presents two central conflicts, one an internal conflict (Man vs. self) and the other an external conflict (Man vs Society). John Proctor is critical to each conflict in the play. His...
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The Crucible
The Crucible is a tragedy because the rules that are usually followed, the rules that we count on to be followed are not. In fact much of what normal people accept as true is inverted. Especially...
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The Crucible
When Hale returns in Act IV, Danforth asks him if he has been preaching in Andover. While a seemingly innocent question, Danforth's paranoia and Hale's answers shows the reader how other towns...
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The Crucible
One simple word explains how Abigail controls the rest of the girls in Arthur Miller's The Crucible--fear. The girls are afraid of her, and probably for good reason. Two specific incidents...
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The Crucible
A classic tragic hero often ends up sacrificing his life due to a situation that was the result of his own weakness. In this most basic sense, Proctor is a tragic hero. To pinpoint why, you must...
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The Crucible
The actor playing John Proctor would have to look like he is in his mid-thirties. He is described in the liner notes as "powerful of body, even tempered and not easily led." He would have to be...
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The Crucible
It was quite easy, in the real witch trial era, in the play, and in the 1950s McCarthy era the play was mocking, to get rid of rivals or benefit personally from publicly accusing someone of...
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The Crucible
This passage can be considered ironic becauase we, as readers and viewers of The Crucible, know the exact opposite of what Danforth is saying to be true. In fact, good people have the most to fear...
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The Crucible
I think that Proctor's crucible is becoming an involved person in a time or crisis. When Proctor is first introduced in Act I and the start of Act II, he is one who does not want to get involved....
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The Crucible
Part of what make The Crucible so powerful is its use of irony. Remember when looking for irony, you're looking for anything that is the opposite of what you expect. In Act IV, Hale returns to...
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The Crucible
John Proctor is the protagonist in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible for two reasons. Proctor is well respected in the community; his voice stands strongest—and alone in defying and challenging the...
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The Crucible
Proctor's death represents a couple of levels of meaning that can apply to the play, in general. Miller deliberately designed the drama to center on Proctor. He is to be the embodiment of the...
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The Crucible
The Crucibleis saturated with allusions. In act 2, Miller has the characters allude to the Bible in order to demonstrate their religious beliefs. For example, Hale alludes to Lucifer's fall from...
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The Crucible
You have identified a major theme of this excellent play. Clearly the conflict between the security of the community and individual freedom runs throughout the play. Salem was a community which...
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The Crucible
Judges: Hathorne and Danforth, who happen to be head judges of the state, and very well-respected and powerful men. They run the proceedings, and have the final say in matters. Court Officers:...
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The Crucible
Puritans had a strong belief in the devil, and that Hell existed. Because of this, they felt that the devil could exert power and influence over people when they were on the earth; hence the...
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The Crucible
In Act IV of The Crucible, Abigail and Mercy flee because Abigail can no longer have what she wants, John Proctor. The ony reason that Abigail got involved with the witch trials was to find a way...
