The Crucible a 1953 play written by Arthur Miller that features characters such as Abigail, Mary Warren, and Reverend Parris who face deception in witchcraft and false accusations. The play demonstrates the effects of mass hysteria in a community driven by deception. The theme of deception within the play is viewed through the Salem witch trials that put the townspeople through terror.
Abigail Williams is presented to the crucible with “worry and apprehension and propriety”(p.567). Implying that she can be seen as rebellious and deceiving from the situations she puts herself. Following with consequences she then has to face. Deception can be viewed in Abigail’s behavior throughout the play she’d go to great measures to deceive the townspeople of Salem, in order for her own selfish upcoming. Abigail is the main cause of accusing the townspeople of witchcraft whilst simultaneously
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Being the oldest girl in the group she is the most frightened of being accused of witchcraft. Mary can be seen as innocent and has integrity because she wants to save others with the truth rather than being deceitful. Deception in character Mary Warren shows she wants to be able, to tell the truth, to save others from being killed by false accusations of witchcraft. She is an easily overcome character, who agrees to deceive the court in order to save herself from any trouble.
Arthur Miller introduces Reverend Parris to The Crucible whilst he “is praying now, though we cannot hear his words a sense of confusion hangs around him”(P.566). Which can imply that although he is a priest he doesn’t know what he’s preaching? The townspeople inference that Abigail’s affiliation with Reverend Parris means he’s allowing Abigail’s association with witchcraft they’d assume that he doesn’t practice what he preaches. Leading the townspeople to fear and deceive that if they attend church they’d be intertwined into witchcraft by