Examples Of Evil In The Crucible

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The friction between evil and good ultimately ignites every battle, from the minutest of internal conflicts to some of the greatest battles. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, great evil has overtaken the town of Salem, Massachusetts. It is a battle between the sinister Abigail Williams and the innocent people of Salem. Innocent lives are being taken due to the fear that some of the people of Salem supposedly practice witchcraft and have sold their lives to the devil. This fear is augmented because of the fact that the people of this town are Puritans, meaning that their entire lives abide by the Bible. This creates the perfect environment for any single person to induce fear into the people in order to achieve a personal goal. A single human being, named Abigail Williams, sparks this evil out of spite. …show more content…

Abigail, along with a band of other girls, accuses several people of witchcraft, whom are then sentenced to hang without a just trial. It seems as though Abigail governs the entire town, and when people attempt to go against her word, they are either hanged or surrender fighting for what is right and take her side. Abigail seems to have absolute power, but her evil is not committed without dire consequences at hand. No evil is ever committed without consequences. Abigail demonstrates this through showing that the evil she has committed whisks away innocent lives, but it also results in John Proctor’s death, which is her goal to begin with. In addition, her evil results in the consequence of her holding a large fraction of power in the town, which is wonderful from her perspective but horrifying from everyone