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How Does Abigail Williams Present Hysteria In The Crucible

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Abigail Williams: The First True Witch of Salem, Massachusetts “Controlled hysteria is what’s required. To exist constantly in a state of controlled hysteria. It’s agony. But everyone has agony. The difference is that I try to take my agony home and teach it to sing” (Arthur Miller, AZ Quotes). In the play, the Crucible, by Arthur Miller, Salem, Massachusetts was a place of constant hysteria in the 1600s because of what would come to be commonly known as the Salem Witch Trials. This was a full-blown witch hunt for people found to display signs of witchcraft. Abigail Williams was the main person to blame for this pursuit of witches in Salem because, first off, she was the one who caused hysteria about witchcraft just to cover up the fact that …show more content…

“Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you,” (Act I, 160). She was the first person in the play to accuse a person of seeing people summon spirits of the Devil. This caused a massive, wide-scale witch hunt to take place; families torn apart, mothers, fathers, and even children murdered for what was considered to be the greater good. Now, others began to accuse people of witchcraft and people who had been lifelong friends to each other now had no choice other than to point fingers at each other or be put to death. Widespread panic and unreasonable action was sweeping through everyone in Salem, all because of a little lie by …show more content…

Afterwards, she was willing to destroy anyone in the way of her getting to be with him. Proctor definitely wishes he had never laid with Abigail, and everyone else was paying for his mistake, as she ruined everyone’s lives, “I have known her, sir. I have known her.” (Act III, 378). A single lie snowballed, leaving death and terror in its wake, all because Abigail could not, and likely did not want to control herself. Every single death of the Salem Witch Trials happened because of one night of infidelity between Proctor and

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Changing the Salem Hysteria Arthur Miller writes a play called The Crucible. In the play, there is a mass hysteria about witchcraft, all started by a group of girls lying about dancing in the woods. The people accused questioned and hanged if they did not confess. Two people that could have stopped the hysteria are Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Proctor.

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The Crucible’s Abigail Williams is best known for her involvement in the Salem Witch Trials just as Senator Joseph McCarthy is best known for his involvement in the Red Scare. Abigail Williams was known in her society as a saint. She had supposedly committed some form of witchcraft and had redeemed herself by giving the names of other “witches”. She, and several other girls, were largely responsible for the conviction and deaths of nineteen innocent villagers. Abigail and McCarthy both had caused mass hysteria in their communities in order to draw attention to themselves, further their reputations, and to get rid of people they saw unfit to live in their society.

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The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller, focuses on the town of Salem, Massachusetts, during the deplorable witch trials revolving around the 1600's. Within these trials, there were multiple accusations that were made about who was really involved in the witch trials, many of the characters who were falsely and baselessly accused were innocent. The falsification that were created by the main character of The Crucible, Abigail Williams were only for her own benefit to protect herself from being accused as one of the “witches” or had she had been there in the forest the night there was witchcraft . For example, in (Act 1.Scene 3)ABIGAIL: She sends her spirit on me in church; she makes me laugh at prayer! ABIGAIL:

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The Power of Influence In the Crucible by Arthur Miller Abigail Williams demonstrates the great influence one vengeful person can make. In the Holocaust Adolf Hitler demonstrates how one person can change the course of many peoples lives. Abigail and Adolf have a great impact on the acts others commit they show how fear and influence can have great consequences.

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Abigail was born as an “orphan” (Abigail Williams, seventeen, enters - a strikingly beautiful girl, an orphan), because of this she never experienced much love until she met proctor, and this made her value love a lot. In act 1 scene 1, Abigail said, “I know how you clutched my back behind your house and …… and you loved me then and you do now!” (Miller, Scene 1, Pg.22) This quote shows that Abigail still want john proctor. Because of Elizabeth; Abigail couldn’t become Proctor’s lover (Abigail’s thought), this made her feel that Elizabeth took her love away, this drove Abigail to a vindictive person, and try to take revenge by accusing Elizabeth of doing witchcraft.

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In the Salem Witch Trials, 141 people were arrested, 19 people were hanged, and one person was crushed to death. In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the witch trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. Abigail was the initial accuser of the witchcraft when she and a few other girls broke the rules. Abby had lied about what happened so she didn’t get punished. Abigail displays her villainous characteristics by telling lies, being manipulative, and leading nineteen innocent people to their untimely death.

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As a result of Abigail’s jealousy toward Elizabeth When the Salem trials started Abigail accused her of witchcraft, so she would hang. Leaving Proctor to defend his pregnant wife in court against Abigail " But it’s a whores vengeance," (1333).

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She didn’t think anything through nor did she know exactly what she was getting into. Abigail was desperate for love and as everyone knows, love can make you do crazy things. “I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart!” From start to finish, it was all miss Abigail Williams. She created this mass hysteria that blanketed Salem like low hanging

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In Act 1 of the play, Abigail Williams was the person who was most responsible for the pandemonium in Salem about witchcraft.

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The first act of The Crucible sets up the play to showcase Salem’s infamous case of mass hysteria, caused by the fear of so-called witches. In the town of Salem, religion is the law, and the land is controlled by strict priests and ministers. As for how strict they were, Miller gave an example, “Their creed forbade anything resembling a theater or ‘vain enjoyment’. They did not celebrate Christmas, and a holiday from work meant only that they must concentrate even more upon prayer” (Miller 4). For the children growing up in Salem, pure fun was not common, and their boredom led to an event that led to dozens of trials and some deaths; this boredom, for lack of a better word, led some girls and a slave-woman, named Tituba, into going to the

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The play the Crucible, by Arthur Miller was set in 17th century in the town of Salem. People in the town were very spiritual. Most of them believed in not only God, but also the devil. Additionally, they thought that witches existed and they thought that they were guided by the devil. there was often talk of witchcraft in Salem, especially in the weeks leading up to the story.

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(Miller,). Abigail Williams planned from the beginning to kill Elizabeth Proctor and repeatedly lied in order to manipulate everyone into believing it was all witchcraft, showing that she is not insane but a sociopath. Insanity

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In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, Miller demonstrated that it was Abigail William’s flaws: lust, vengeance, and jealously that led her to be responsible the most for the tragedy of the witch hunts in Salem. Abigail Williams started the entire suspicion of there being active member of witchcraft throughout Salem, Massachusetts. She did this for her own benefits and used trickery to get what she wanted. Abigail was corrupt and only cared for her own desires. There are many reasons that these flaws are crucial to the outcome of the play.

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