ipl-logo

Salem Witch Trials In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

577 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The dilemma of each character in the crucible

Written by Arthur Miller, The Crucible is a play that is based off of the Salem witch trials. The play takes place in Salem in 1692 and follows the lives of characters that were all real people. While using story lines and the names of actual people, Miller dramatizes what actually happened. In act one of The Crucible, the readers are introduced to over 10 characters. Two of those characters are Abigail Williams’ and Samuel Parris. Act one begins with Samuel Parris discovering that his niece, Abigail, was dancing in the woods. Today, this would not be overly concerning, but back in that time children were hardly allowed to speak to anyone. Since children were supposed to be so submissive towards adults, it was shocking that a group of kids would go out to dance by themselves and was suspected to be witch trials. As most would in the late 17th century, Parris believed that his niece and daughter were performing witchcraft in the woods and that was why his daughter Betty had fallen sick. Throughout majority of …show more content…

Aside from that, people accused others of being witches or having something to do with witchcraft if they had a grudge against them or needed something. People were able to accuse others of being witches for having too much land or for owning too many cattle. Witch trials were not only a way to get rid of the Devil, but also a way to get rid of people that you disliked. In the case of The Crucible, the witch trials began because of religious beliefs and the fear that Lucifer was controlling the children of Salem. To get out of trouble during the witch trials, those who were accused simply just accused others to be seen as innocent and avoid execution. When Abigail, Tituba, and Betty are accused of witchcraft, they accuse others in return and use anything that seems slightly off about the people they are accusing as evidence of

Show More
Related
224 Words | 1 Pages

Also, throughout the play Abigail accuses many people of witchcraft in order to save herself. An example of this is when Hale questions Abigail in act 1, and Abigail accuses several girls of

Read More
1208 Words | 5 Pages

Arthur Miller, a playwright, wrote The Crucible, a dramatized and fictionalized play. The setting took place in Salem, Massachusetts, during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. The play is about the witch trials, which started due to the jealousy and lust of Abigail Williams, the leader of the witchcraft trial, wanting to have John Proctor, the main protagonist, again. At the end of the play, Proctor is led to his hanging. Throughout the play, there are many events that had helped him made his decision.

Read More
448 Words | 2 Pages

Young Elizabeth “Betty” Parris and Abigail Williams were cousins, but also best friends. The girls enjoyed playing together and listening to the stories of their slave, Tituba. Because of their connections with the church the girls had most likely grown up with Puritan beliefs and were strongly influenced by that culture. The girls knew all ten of the commandments and were familiar with what they were and weren't allowed to do by the ways of Lord. With this strong Christian influence, 9-year-old Betty and 12-year-old Abigail were the last people expected to get caught up in a witchcraft scandal.

Read More
395 Words | 2 Pages

In the play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, several residents are unjustly accused of witchcraft. The accusers tended to have their own motivation behind accusing these people. For example, accusing people out of jealousy was a popular motive for the accusers. This can be seen through Ann Putnam’s accusation of Rebecca Nurse, who was accused of killing Ann Putnam’s seven infant children. Ann Putnam was jealous of Rebecca because while Ann had lost all of her children except one, Rebecca says she had “eleven children, and [is] twenty-six times a grandma” (Miller 15).

Read More
784 Words | 4 Pages

Since the beginning of time people have gone through trials in court to either be proven innocent or guilty. In the Crucible by Arthur Miller a massive number of people were being convicted in Salem, Massachusetts because of the witch trials. The law of the land states that everyone is above suspicion until they are demonstrated to be guilty by legitimate evidence; in the play the Crucible if a person was accused of an unlawful act they were summons for being a witch and working for the devil without proper confirmation. Citizens in Salem were imposed to establish their innocent or be put to death, which caused conflicting issues in the village.

Read More
925 Words | 4 Pages

“Character Analysis over The Crucible” Arthur Miller is a commonly-known playwright, most famous for his 1953 play, The Crucible. The basis for The Crucible came from the witch trials which occurred in Salem, Massachusetts during the puritan era. Miller even uses some of the same characters in his dramatized play that were a part of the original witch trials in Salem. However, Miller made a few alterations to the historical members of the Salem society in order to suit his dramatic purpose in The Crucible, particularly Abigail Williams, John Proctor, and Reverend Samuel Parris.

Read More
811 Words | 4 Pages

The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a dramatic play that expresses a very important message and that is how far people would go to save themselves from the hands of death. There are many characters in the Crucible who are guilty of taking innocent lives, but there are three major characters who, without a doubt, are the most at blame. The play takes place in the city of Salem, a city filled with people that would do anything to keep their reputation clean. Throughout the play, Miller is introducing multiple characters that experience changes in their decisions and negatively influence more people eventually leading up to the witch trials. The main point that the story revolves around is that people would rather lie and blame someone else instead of confessing and accepting the punishment.

Read More
577 Words | 3 Pages

As life goes on, we learn that there are many struggles that we go through that change us for better or for worse. In The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, a series of witch trials occur in the town of Salem and innocent people get accused and executed, but throughout the trials, many characters develop into something unexpected. A crucible is a container that can withstand heat and it shows the impurities of a metal. This is significant because the true characters of many people in Salem are revealed. Throughout The Crucible John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, and Giles Corey are all pushed to their boiling point as they go through the trials.

Read More
1257 Words | 6 Pages

The Salem witch trials proved to be one of the most cruel and fear driven events to ever occur in history. Many innocent people were accused of witchcraft, and while some got out of the situation alive not everyone was as lucky. Arthur Miller the author of The Crucible conveys this horrific event in his book and demonstrates what fear can lead people to do. But the reason as to why Arthur Miller felt the need to write The Crucible in the first place was because the unfortunate reality that history seemed to have repeated itself again. In the article “Are You Now or Were You Ever”, Arthur Miller claims that the McCarthy era and the Salem witch trials were similar and he does this through his choice of diction, figurative language, and rhetorical questions.

Read More
658 Words | 3 Pages

The Salem Witch Trials was a truly grim period in American history. People were put on trial with little to no evidence for their arrest, so many had to make sacrifices in order to save themselves or loved ones. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, character John Proctor made the decision to expose his own infidelity to save his wife, and later sacrificed his own life by maintaining his values. From the beginning of the novel John Proctor’s view on the Salem Witch Trial is evident, he wishes to maintain the truth in Salem.

Read More
377 Words | 2 Pages

The Trials was a desperate way of obtaining power as a lower ranked member of society. The servants or the girls of Salem found this as the perfect opportunity. They can blame anyone they want and they will be punished without solid evidence. One in Salem has that great of power by requiring the accused to name others in their confessions, a witch hunt like that in Salem can take on the form of a pyramid scheme or chain letter. This "naming names" allowed the accusations to spread and spread, while also permitting the public airing of grievances and sins.

Read More
434 Words | 2 Pages

Consider what is known of the Salem Witch Trials. When recollecting it, one may think of how asinine it is that such a frenzy began over nothing. Humanity knows its history well, and with the platitude “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it,” one might assume that those times of hysteria are over. Surely the opposite must then be true, that those who know their history would learn from their mistakes, but this is not always true. As senseless as the trials were, they were a mere shadow of a modern-day witch hunt; this time, however, it was not witches, but communists.

Read More
538 Words | 3 Pages

The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller. It takes place during the Salem witch trials. Salem is an isolated town in the Boston area that is set up perfectly for witchcraft accusations. Abigail is being accused of witchcraft and she is a manipulative girl. Abigail has been accused of committing witchcraft in the woods and she plans to bring other people down with her.

Read More
260 Words | 2 Pages

The Crucible Writing Many people are killed during the witch hunts of Salem, Massachusetts. The play The Crucible describes the events that took place in Salem in 1692. During this time many people believe in witchcraft. Proctor, Hale, and Cheever, along with many others are involved with the court hearings.

Read More
461 Words | 2 Pages

Also after that day in the woods betty couldn’t sit there and listen to god's words or name and that was a sign of being bewitched. Another wrong act Abigail had done wrong was drink blood that day in the woods. At the end of ACT 1 Tituba had confessed to being a witch because they were going to whip her to death. Also at the end ACT 1 the girls started naming people and blaming them for witchcraft so they wouldn't get caught

Read More

More about Salem Witch Trials In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Related Topics

Open Document