The Effect Of Relationships In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

If someone goes through a really traumatic experience would it affect the relationships they are in? Well… they might lose trust in someone, or they might meet new people who change how they see your relationship, or it could even destroy the relationship. So yes experiences affect relationships a lot; they are what make up a relationship. Almost all of the relationships in The Crucible by Arthur Miller are affected by the witch hunt.

One of these relationships was that of Elizabeth and John Proctor. An experience that they went through was John had cheated on Elizabeth with Abigale. It had ruined their relationship entirely. He had lost her trust completely. As she shows when she says, “John, if it were not Abigail that you must

In the beginning of their affair John had fallen for Abby and she had fallen for him, they were in love. Abby wanted Liz proctor dead so her relationship with John would not need to be a secret. But when Elizabeth gets suspicious about the affair she throws Abby out. This obviously ruins the relationship, and John becomes very guilty. He starts to move back toward Elizabeth and lose the feelings toward Abby. As he proves when he says “Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But i will cut off my hand before i’ll ever reach for you again. Wipe it out of mind. We never touched, Abby.” (Miller, p.22). Although he never really stopped loving her completely. When Abby turns on the Proctors and accuses Elizabeth of being a witch everything changes. John loses his feelings for Abby as soon as he thought of losing his wife, he started to work against Abby, trying to prove her wrong and save his wife from hanging. The experiences that Abigail Williams and John Proctor went through completely destroyed their relationship in The Crucible. This shows how experiences can affect people in a bad way

At first the girls trust Abby they will even follow her into the woods to dance and sing. But as soon as people find out and Abby might get into trouble she turns on the girls, she tells them “Now look you. All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sisters. And that is all. And mark this. Let either of you breath a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and i will come to you in the black of some terrible night and i will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know i can do it; i saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine, and i have seen some reddish work done at night, and i can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!” (Miller, p.20). This scares the girls and they do as she says, they lie about being witches and start accusing other people. Then they start to turn against her, as in when Mary Warren starts to tell the truth. The other girls were too scared to do what Mary did and they bring her down until she joins their side again and accuses John of being the Devil. These girls relationship was also destroyed the girls will never trust Abby again and they have ruined many others