What if you are accused of doing a horrific act that you are indisputably innocent of and there is no way to prove it? What if you lived in a town where there was so much hysteria that the justice system relied on accusations solely as evidence? What if the punishment for these horrific acts was death? In The Crucible, these events occurred and resulted in over twenty innocents accused of being with the devil that resulted in most of those innocents put to their deaths by being hanged or being pressed by large stones. Although, Abigail Williams did not kill any of them directly, she was undoubtedly the character to blame for the mayhem that was The Salem Witch Trials. One of the causes of Abigail’s unreasonable behavior against John is jealousy. …show more content…
In other words, she drank a charm to kill Elizabeth Proctor and danced in the woods, both sins in the Puritan society of Salem. Mary Warren states, “We must tell the truth, Abby! You’ll only be whipped for dancin’ and the other things!” (Miller 18). As explained in the quote the girls did not have to accuse innocent people, but only tell the truth and only get whipped, not hanged. However, Abigail created lies by accusing innocent people of practicing witchcraft and told the girls they had to lie as well otherwise she would call them witches and they would be hung. Abigail set in motion a devastating domino effect in Salem. By forcing her friends to accuse innocent people of witchcraft those innocent people were then encouraged to accuse other innocent people of witchcraft so they wouldn’t get hanged, which all started with Abigail and her friends dancing in the woods. Therefore, Abigail could have stopped all the craziness by taking a whipping and getting the reputation of dancing in the woods but instead she created the horrific event of The Salem Witch Trials. Moreover, if Abigail and the other girls honestly confessed that they were dancing in the woods and drank a charm in addition to not accusing anyone there would not be a fear of witchcraft in Salem and no need to accuse uninvolved individuals which later resulted in their deaths. Thus, if there were not a fear of witchcraft there would not be such an extensive amount of people accused of witchcraft that were jailed and then executed. Also, there would have been no innocent people accused that then had to accuse others of being with the devil and practicing