As a result of Abigail's claims about the poppet, we (and John) have the chance to see that Elizabeth was right about Abigail all along. Up until now, John sees Abigail as just a girl, but Elizabeth knows what ruthlessness she is capable of, that Abigail still harbors strong feelings for John, and what terrible things she is capable of in order to see her dreams of being with him again come to fruition. Thus, we learn that Elizabeth was never paranoid; her suspicions of Abigail were absolutely founded and valid. We also see John wrong, again. He was wrong, morally, before the play began when he bedded Abigail, and he is wrong now when he denies that Abigail would try to harm Elizabeth. We might forgive him his transgression of passion; we might empathize with him in regard to his affair (as Elizabeth later does). However, his failure to...
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protect his wife and his town when he doesn't report what Abigail told him is more difficult to understand. It is in the poppet scene when he realizes the full extent of his mistakes. With the revelation that Elizabeth is right, he becomes more difficult to redeem in his own eyes and ours.
Further, the poppet scene helps to show us how well and truly hysteria has taken over the town and how eager the townsfolk are to believe anything the girls say, no matter how outlandish (or the evidence to the contrary). Mary Warren made the poppet and stuck the needle in; Abigail sat next to her in court when she made it; there are no other poppets in the Proctor home but the one Mary made: there is plenty of reason to believe that Elizabeth is innocent. On the other hand, there is plenty of reason to believe Rebecca Nurse is innocent as well. It doesn't matter. As a result of Cheever's behavior during this scene, we see how a mere accusation is now enough to presume guilt.
What does the poppet reveal about Abigail in The Crucible?
I think the incident with the poppet that Mary Warren made for Elizabeth in Act II of this excellent drama shows the evil nature of Abigail and how she is plotting to have Elizabeth killed through an accusation of witchcraft. It definitely shows the premeditated nature of her attack against Elizabeth. Note the way that she carefully planned it, either watching Mary Warren planting a needle in her poppet or putting it in herself as she sat next to Mary Warren as she was making it. She then used this as an opportunity for another demonstration of how she is being attacked by witchery, as Cheever shares with the Proctors:
The girl, the Williams girl, Abigail Williams, sir. She sat to dinner in Reverend Parris's house tonight, and without word nor warnin' she falls to the floor. Like a struck beast, he says, and screamed a scream that a bull would weep to hear. And he goes to save her, and, stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, he draws a needle out. And demandin' of her how she come to be so stabbed, she testify it were your wife's familiar spirit pushed it in.
Abigail is thus cold-heartedly and cruelly willing to harm herself to succeed in her goal of disposing of Elizabeth so that she can be with John Proctor. However, the intelligence with which she has thought her plan through is rather chilling, to say the least, and indicates the way in which the Salem Witch Trials were used as an excuse to settle old scores for so many, not just the Putnams.