The Crucible Characters Essay Research Paper The

The Crucible: Characters Essay, Research Paper

The Crucible: Characters

Chetan Patel

The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller that was first produced in 1953,

is based on the true story of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Miller wrote the

play to parallel the situations in the mid-twentieth century of Alger Hiss,

Owen Latimore, Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, and Senator McCarthy, if only

suggestively. (Warshow 116) Some characters in the play have specific agendas

carried out by their accusations, and the fact that the play is based on

historical truth makes it even more intriguing.

The characters in this play are simple, common people. The accused are

charged and convicted of a crime that is impossible to prove. The following

witchcraft hysteria takes place in one of America’s wholesome, theocratic towns,

which makes the miscarriage of justice such a mystery even today. The reasons

the villains select the people they do for condemnation are both simple and

clear. All of the accusers have ulterior motives, such as revenge, greed, and

covering up their own behavior. Many of the accusers have meddled in witchcraft

themselves, and are therefore doubly to be distrusted. (Warshow 116) The court

convicts the victims on the most absurd testimony, and the reader has to wonder

how the judges and the townspeople could let such a charade continue.

The leading character of the play is John Proctor, a man who often

serves as the only voice of reason in the play. He had an affair with Abigail

Williams, who later charges his wife with witchcraft. Proctor is seemingly the

only person who can see through the children’s accusations. The reader sees him

as one of the more “modern” figures in the trials because he is hardheaded,

skeptical, and a voice of common sense. He thinks the girls can be cured of

their “spells” with a good whipping. (Warshow 114) At the end of the play,

Proctor has to make a choice. He can either confess to a crime he is innocent

of to save himself from execution, or die proclaiming his innocence. He ends up

choosing death because a false confession would mean implicating other accused

people, including Rebecca Nurse. (Rovere 2632) Proctor feels she is good and

pure, unlike his adulterous self, and does not want to tarnish her good name and

the names of his other innocent friends by implicating them. (Warshow 117) By

choosing death, Proctor takes the high road and becomes a true tragic hero. The

reader feels that his punishment is unjust (especially since the crime of

witchcraft is imagined and unprovable.) Because the trials take place in a

Christian, American town, the reader must then wonder if anything like this

could happen in his or her own time. This is particularly true of people who

saw the play when it first came out, in the era of McCarthyism.

Ann and Thomas Putnam are two instigators of the witchcraft hysteria in

the play. Ann Putnam is the one who first plants the idea that Betty is

bewitched. Her motivation for lying is obvious; she needs to cover up her own

behavior. After all, she had sent her daughter to Tituba to conjure up the dead

in order to find out what happened to her dead babies. She can’t have it said

that she, a Christian woman, practices the pagan art with a slave from Barbados,

or that her daughter’s illness is her fault because she sent her to participate

in the black art, so she blames others. (Warshow 113) Revenge is another

motive of hers. Tituba’s tricks led her to the conclusion that her babies were

murdered while under the care of a midwife, Goody Osburn. Osburn is later

accused of witchcraft. Ann Putnam’s husband also influences her. (Rovere 2632)

Thomas Putman had nominated his wife’s brother-in-law, James Bayley, to

be the minister of Salem. He was qualified and the people voted him in, but a

faction stopped his acceptance. Thomas Putnam felt superior to most people in

the village, and was angry that they rejected his choice for minister. He was

also involved in a land dispute with Francis Nurse, whose wife Rebecca is

accused of witchcraft. This is detailed in the movie Three Sovereigns for Sarah,

which shows basically the same story as the play. Many people died because of

Thomas Putnam’s land hunger. The Putnams, driven by their need for revenge and

their greed, contributed to the huge travesty of justice that was the Salem

Witch Trails.

The motive of Abigail Williams is equally easy to decipher. Abigail is

the ringleader of the group of girls who testify in court against those accused

of witchcraft. She and John Proctor had an affair previously, when she worked

as a servant in his home, and she obviously does not want it to be over. She

says to him, “I know how you clutched my back behind your house and sweated like

a stallion whenever I come near! Or did I dream that. It’s she [Elizabeth]

that put me out, yo

Внимание, отключите Adblock

Вы посетили наш сайт со включенным блокировщиком рекламы!
Ссылка для скачивания станет доступной сразу после отключения Adblock!

Скачать