Elizabeth Proctor and Abigail Williams are both extremely important characters in The Crucible who help us get insight into the Salem Witch Trials. Although they are opposing characters, you’d be surprised to find out how similar they actually are. Today, I will be discussing their personalities and how they compare and contrast each other.
While reading The Crucible we learn that Abigail Williams is the antagonist. Abigail is portrayed this way because she is a manipulative liar. When people started speculating that Abigail was a witch, she quickly came up with a lie in order to have the whole town turn against her friends. This was extremely thoughtless of Abigail, especially because 19 people had to face her consequences and die. If Abigail
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Their differing labels is not the only way they contrast each other, Abigail is selfish while Elizabeth is selfless. Abigail can be seen as selfish when she knowingly has an affair with a married man, John Proctor. She can also be viewed in an egotistical way when she creates a lie to save herself, but it kills 19 innocent people in her town. Elizabeth is the complete opposite and is extremely selfless. One of the foremost examples of her rendering this trait was when she had good intentions to lie about her husband in order to save him. Even though her plan backfired, since John actually had told the truth, we all know that she was just trying to save her unloyal husband. Even though both of those situations show how Abigail and Elizabeth contrast one another, they also can support how they are comparable characters. In both of the given scenarios, Abigail and Elizabeth act similarly because they both are strategic. Disregarding the fact that it was wrong, Abigail's lie can be seen as tactical since it did remove the negative attention off of her and saved her. Elizabeth's lie to the judges was also well thought out since she could have saved John with