John Proctor's Jealousy In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

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he play “The Crucible” by: Arthur Miller told the story of Salem, a town in Massachusetts during the time of McCarthyism in 1692. The small town was turned upside down when someone mentioned witches and the townspeople began turning on one another one after the other. A group of girls were the culprits behind this whole tragedy saying they saw people with the devil when they couldn’t see anything at all. A universal theme in this play would be that jealousy contains more of self-love than of love, Abigail Williams did everything she could to get rid of Elizabeth Proctor so that she could have her husband John Proctor’s love all to herself but in reality he did not love her. Throughout it the play revolves around the conflict between the Proctors …show more content…

Abigail said to John, “I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart...I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!”(Miller, 150). During this brief conversation between the two, Abigail says on how she still believes that he loves her and wishes to be with her in her imagination when in reality he doesn’t want anything to do with her anymore and this creates most of the conflicts and how the story ends. This quote shows on how delusional Abigail really is with her love with John and how she believes that he wants to leave his family Hartshorne 2 and be with her but in reality he wants nothing to do with her and the only person who loves her is herself. Abigail’s obsession with John is how the crucible becomes a story, nothing in this story would have happened if Abigail and the other girls hadn’t danced in the forest and drank …show more content…

When John ended up being accused of being a witch Abigail decided to leave town when she realized what she had done to the man she loves. She stole all of her uncle’s money and left with everything wrong she has done and sins she committed on her shoulders. “My daughter tells me how she heard them speaking of ships last week, and tonight I discover my-my strongbox is broke into” (Miller, 203). It shows that once she realizes that what she has been doing is wrong and ended up hurting the one she loved finally finding out that everything that she was doing wasn’t helping John but ended up only hurting him and his family. This proves on how she really is all alone and that the jealousy she held onto contained only self-love than of love. The main conflict between the main characters brings together all the other conflicts of other characters together throughout the story. Between Abigail and the Proctors, Abigail has a lot of jealousy for Elizabeth wanting to take her place when John does not love her at all compared to Elizabeth. She holds onto this illusion of her being with John and everything working out okay but in reality she only has self-love compared to her illusion of John