Where there is humanity, there is weakness. This is a large aspect of the 1953 play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Throughout the play, various characters illustrate human fallibility, consisting of dishonesty, vindictiveness, weakness, and mass hysteria. The Crucible encapsulates the worst aspects of mob mentality, and exposes the individual ‘sins’ and secrets of each character. From the very beginning of the play, Abigail Williams proves to be a dishonest and vengeful character. In Act One, she threatens the other girls who were in the to keep to her version of what happened in the woods so that none of them end up in trouble. “Mark this—let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word about the other things, and I will come to you …show more content…
She is weak-willed, and a prime victim to the mob mentality that befalls Salem. After returning to the Proctors’ home after being in the court all day, Mary Warren recited to John and Elizabeth what had happened while she was in the court. “I hear a voice, a screamin‘ voice, and it were my voice… and all at once I remembered everything she (Sarah Good) done to me!” However, in the act that immediately follows, after a small amount of pressure from Proctor, Mary Warren confesses that their charade was ‘pretense’ and that she ‘never saw no spirits.’ This is one example of Mary Warren’s cowardly nature. She contradicts herself throughout the play with a lack of structural values that the audience, or even other characters, can rely on her for. Her weak nature becomes a source of frustration on several occasions, such as at the end of Act II, when after a long struggle between herself and everyone else in the court, Mary turns completely against John Proctor and proclaims that he is, “...the Devil‘s man!” This is a much different claim than the one she made when first arriving in the court, and when speaking to John himself. This shows why Mary Warren is a character most notable for her weakness and …show more content…
By the end of these trials and accusations, Hale considers himself the same as those whose death warrants he signed. “Why, it is all simple. I come to do the Devil‘s work. I come to counsel Christians they should belie themselves.” He no longer has complete faith in the court, but he also does not hold as much power after going against it. His confidence in his own accusations has faltered tremendously. He chooses to return to the Salem jail only to counsel those set to hang. His confidence within himself and the courts did little but lead to his and those accused's downfall in the end. He begins blaming himself for these circumstances, due to the power and confidence he first had upon entering