Discussion Topic

The primary responsibility for the tragic events in Arthur Miller's The Crucible

Summary:

The primary responsibility for the tragic events in Arthur Miller's The Crucible lies with the combination of mass hysteria and the manipulative actions of key characters like Abigail Williams. Abigail's deceit and the town's quickness to believe in witchcraft without evidence lead to the unfounded accusations and subsequent executions.

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In The Crucible, who is most to blame for the Salem events and why?

A number of arguments could be made and supported with anecdotal evidence from the text, but when we evaluate the play as a whole, it becomes very difficult to apportion blame. If one character is most to blame, then it would logically follow that another character might be completely blameless. It seems, rather, that Arthur Miller aims to demonstrate exactly the opposite. Everyone in Salem is responsible; no one can be completely exempted from blame.

Miller presents the situation as mass hysteria: each individual does not merely pass their heightened suspicions along to one other person, but every community member infects others in an ever-widening net of suspicion. The specific accusations mushroom into an epidemic where guilt is attached by contagion. Accordingly, as each person is suspected, they not only claim their innocence but often try to push the blame onto other people; the more they successfully implicate, the more...

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their hopes grow of being exonerated themselves.

The senior office holders are the men who could have put a stop to the proceedings, but their pride prevented them from doing so. In that regard, as they are the highest authorities who pronounce the sentences and have the executions carried out, the blood of the innocent is on their hands.

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Abigail Williams is the most to blame for the witchcraft hysteria that takes hold of Salem.  She participates in witchcraft rituals in the woods, theoretically causing her cousin (and Ruth Putnam) to become ill from guilt and fear and allowing her uncle to find her and the other girls dancing and conjuring.  Her actions begin the entire problem.  Betty Parris wakes for a few moments in Act One to scream, "You drank blood, Abby!  You didn't tell [Reverend Parris] that! [....] You drank a charm to kill John Proctor's wife!"  Clearly, Betty is stressed out about their activities in the forest, and she is anxious about her father finding out.  If Abigail hadn't actually been engaging in these illegal and immoral activities, the hysteria would never have even begun.

Further, Abigail makes the first accusation when she names Tituba as a witch.  Once Abigail becomes the subject of Mr. Hale's questions, she panics.  In order to redirect suspicion away from herself, she cries out, "She made me do it!  She made Betty do it!" and she blames Tituba for "mak[ing] [her] drink blood," laugh during prayer, and sleepwalk naked.  Putnam and Parris then clamor to hang or beat Tituba to force her to confess, and she does what Abigail did before her: accuse someone else, someone who the town will believe could be a witch.  Thus, Abigail starts the chain of accusations that ignited the hysteria.

Finally, Abigail turns Tituba's attempt to save her own life into an opportunity to accuse others in the town and create her position of authority in the trials.  By the end of Act One, Hale is blessing Tituba and calling her "God's instrument," one who has been specially selected by God to "help [them] cleanse [their] village."  Tituba has become the center of attention, has acquired a position of authority (at least, relative to her position before), and Abigail wants this too.  She "rises, staring as though inspired" and she yells out, "I want to open myself!" and she repeats the names of the women Tituba named, adding one more.  Indeed, she has been inspired; she seems to realize that she will be believed if she falsely accuses others, and we might imagine that she now sees her opportunity to accuse Elizabeth Proctor.  She proceeds to falsely accuse three more women before the end of the act.

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While there is a list of people in The Crucible responsible for the hysteria that grips Salem, a more interesting culprit might be the town's culture.

Abigail, the girls, Hathorne and Danforth, Reverend Parris, and the Putnams all help to cause the hysteria in Salem. We could even make a case that Hale played a role in encouraging the Salem hysteria.  However, Miller makes a point that Salem's culture was predisposed to the hysteria that is the basis for The Crucible.

Much of the analysis about Salem's culture comes from the Act I stage directions.  Miller's details help us gain insight into Salem.   Miller talks about the town's intense seriousness towards daily life.  They had "no novelists- and would not have permitted anyone to read a novel if one were handy."  There was no theatre or anything "resembling 'vain enjoyment."  Dancing and celebration were seen as work of "jokers" and not encouraged.  The town's extreme seriousness showed a lack of perspective. It is why panic grips the adults when they find out that the girls were in the woods.  For example, Parris is aghast when he asks Abigail if the girls were dancing.  When Rebecca Nurse dismisses what happened in the woods as childish immaturity, she is dismissed.  Her common sense approach is no match for the intense seriousness that is a part of Salem life.

People who broke the seriousness to which Salem committed itself were dealt with severely.  Miller talks about the town's "practice of appointing a two-man patrol whose duty was to 'walk forth in the time of God’s worship to take notice of such as either lye about the meeting house, without attending to the word and ordinances, or that lye at home or in the fields with-out giving good account thereof, and to take the names of such  persons, and to present them to the magistrates, whereby they may be accordingly proceeded against.”   Reporting on people's behaviors and "naming names" were embedded in Salem culture.  Miller includes this detail because he sees it as a major contributing factor to the hysteria surrounding the witch trials.  Salem people were not able to simply let people live their own lives.  Rather, there was a constant intrusiveness that defined Salem culture: "This predilection for minding other people’s business was time-honored among the people of Salem, and it undoubtedly created many of the suspicions which were to feed the coming madness."  The need to constantly report on other people who were "breaking the rules" was a cultural spark that flared into a wildfire.

Finally, Miller feels Salem people had a fear of "the other" that contributed to the hysteria.  Miller argues that Salem did not deal well with anything seen as different.  For example, they saw the forest as "the last place on earth that was not paying homage to God." Darkness and anything that was not fully understood was seen as bad. What they did not understand was demonized as the work of "the Devil."  Miller points out that their fear of "the other" was based on insecurity about their town's purity. They "found it necessary to deny any other sect its freedom; lest their New Jerusalem be deviled and corrupted by wrong ways and deceitful ideas."  The result was "an air of innate resistance" where persecution became a part of their cultural residue: "They believed, in short, that they held in their steady hands the candle that would light the world."  This candle lit the fires of hysteria.

Several characters in The Crucible play an active role in spreading hysteria. However, there is much to be said about how the culture of Salem might have had a role in encouraging its emotional contagion and madness.

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Who is to blame for the tragic events in The Crucible?

The blame for the events of the story has to be assigned to more than a single individual. Abigail Williams and her friends certainly deserve a portion of the blame. Judge Danforth, Reverend Parris and Reverend Hale also share responsibility for the numerous deaths resulting from the witchtrials. 

The trouble in Salem begins when Abigail convinces her friends (and Tituba) to divert attention from their own midnight actions in the woods. To do this, accusations of witchcraft are made against others.

These accusations are fabricated for the most part - simply made up. The responsibility for the lies rests with Abigail and her cohort. However, it is at this point in the story that the responsibility shifts to the adults in the Salem community.

Instead of actually assessing the claims made by frightened girls (who happen to be facing quite a serious punishment for witchcraft of their own), Hale and Parris decide the stories are true. Believing the girls' lies without skepticism is the fault of these adults and community leaders.   

Furthermore, it is the official court that hands down the verdicts and sentences citizens to death. This court, represented in large part by Danforth, is responsible for the tragedy of wrongful death meted out in punishment for crimes that were never committed. 

Seen in this way, we can say that the girls' accusations tip the first proverbial dominoes leading to tragedy, but they are far from alone in the final blame. 

...the community's reaction to these accusations, he shows how easily stories can be taken out of context—and how people are blamed for crimes they haven't committed.

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Who is to blame for the tragic events in The Crucible by Arthur Miller?

The answer to your question depends largely on who you have determined was to blame for the tragic events that happened in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. There is plenty of blame to go around, so here are several ideas since I'm not certain which might suit your own ideas.

First of all, the Puritan system could be blamed for this tragedy. It is a religious culture that no doubt began with spiritual motives; however, by the time we encounter it here, the rigidity of sin-finding and sin-punishing have created an environment of paranoia and suspicion. People are much too quick to find fault in others, hoping this will divert some attention from their own flaws. And don't forget, this all started because, according to Puritan law, the girls were going to get whipped for being in the forest one night. If this is your position, your topic sentence might read something like this: The primary cause of these tragic events in Salem was the Puritan theocracy which demanded legal and religious punishment for sin, rewarding those who claimed to recognize evil.

Another source of blame for what happened in Salem is the court. It is true that the judges had a job to do and they took it quite seriously; however, they also consistently assumed the accusers to be true and the accused to be guilty. In fact, we know that the judges even ate with the accusing girls, as Mary Warren says.

Four judges and the King’s deputy sat to dinner with us but an hour ago.

Even in the face of evidence and testimony, the judges proceed; and it is evident in the last act that Danforth is too proud to relent in any way, even though he has compelling reason to do so. 

I will not receive a single plea for pardon or postponement. Them that will not confess will hang. Postponement now speaks a floundering on my part; reprieve or pardon must cast guilt on the guilt of them that died till now. While I speak God's law, I will not crack its voice with whimpering.

If you believe the court and judges are primarily to blame, perhaps a sentence like this would be effective: If the judges of the court had not been too prideful to consider that they might be wrong, and if they had been more open-minded about the testimony and evidence brought before them, lives could have been saved.

If, however, you blame Abigail as the instigator of the trials, which is a reasonable position, your topic sentence might be this: Abigail Williams was the cause of the witch trials because she wanted to avoid punishment for dabbling in witchcraft and because she wanted John Proctor for herself.

Abigail's selfishness and deceit are the root of everything else, though of course others are not blameless. Parris certainly promotes the trials because it benefits him not to have anyone questioning the behavior of his daughter and niece. The Putnams obviously benefit financially from the trials, and the other girls are just glad to have avoided a public whipping.

Perhaps you have something else in mind, but this should give you something to work with as you write your own topic sentence. 

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Who is most to blame for the Salem witch hunt in The Crucible?

I am going to answer this differently than most would. Many would, probably, state that Abigail Williams is the one to blame for the witch hunt in the play "The Crucible."

Instead of looking at one person as holding the power to be most to blame, one could look at the Puritan society as being the one to place the blame upon.

The Puritans had some very strict theologies. They believed that people were predestined to be either saved or damned, that Christ only died for the elect, and that mankind is sinful based upon the fall of Adam and Eve. For the majority of the population, these were hard ideologies to swallow. Any minor falter proved a person to be wrong in the eyes of the society.

That being said, given the staunch rules the Puritans held, any behaviors which they deemed sinful or wrong were attacked. A simple sickness turned into hysteria based upon the reactions of the society at large.

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