Brianna King

Mr.Choi

Composition English

02 November 2017

The Malevolent Era

In Arthur Miller's, The Crucible, the ambience takes place on 1692 in a village in

Salem Massachusetts. A series of cases, investigations and prosecutions took place and were

labeled the Salem Witch Trials. These trials consisted of a group of young girls in the Salem

Village that claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft.

These events ended with the deaths of twenty people and the incarceration of ninety two people.

The particular events that occurred were confined in 1693 and when the colony admitted the

trials were a mistake, they compensated the families of those convicted. Two hundred and sixty

three years later, the era of McCarthyism was employed and utilized. McCarthyism is the

practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. This

custom was created by Joseph McCarthy.

In the first Act of The Crucible, one of the main characters named Abigail Williams

was threatening the town girls saying, Let either of you breathe 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. And you know i can do it, i have seen some reddish work
done at night, and i can make you wish that you had never seen the sun go down!. In this scene,

Abigail is shown to be manipulative and threatening. Abigail uses pathos to threaten the girls by

telling them what she will do to them if they snitch on her. Simultaneously, she is able to bully

the other girls into submission of what she wants. She gained and took advantage of the girls

vulnerability. Abigail is powerful enough to make others go along with her formidable lies.

The logical fallacy that is being used is an Ad Hominem. An Ad Hominem consists of something

being directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.

In Act 4, the setting takes place in court for one of the Witch trials while Mary Warren is

testifying in the court under Elizabeth Proctors behalf. While Mary delivers her statement to the

court, she used certain unfavorable connotations about Abigail and Abigail becomes aware that

the court might actually believe her. Abigail directed all of the negative attention off of herself

and placed it on Mary. Abigail yelled in distress, I know not. A wind, a cold wind has come.

Oh heavenly father take away this shadow! in order for the court to envision that Mary is in fact

something evil therefore making her an unreliable witness. This reference supports the claim that

Abigail is a deceptive individual. The logical fallacy being used in her quote is a Red Herring.

Another representation of Abigail Williams is that she is distraught. In Act 1 Abigail is

speaking with her uncle, We danced but that was it. It were sport uncle! Abigail said that the

girls and herself were only doing sport in the woods nothing more however, she later then

confesses a false and half truth stating that Tituba was the one performing a ritual representing

witchcraft, therefore proving that she is a deceptive young woman.

 Another character in the playwright, The Crucible is John proctor, also known as a

protagonist of the play. John Proctor is perceived to be a hardworking man, father and husband.

In the play, John has a wife named Elizabeth and they have three children all boys and all in

which have been baptized except for one. John ends up having an affair with Abigail and ends up

dehumanizing himself because of that throughout the play. In Act 2, John cites, I mean it

solemnly, Rebecca; I like not the smell of this authority. In this quote, Proctor is presented to be

ghastly stating that he basically does not feel comfortable with the new form of authority that

theyre gaining.

In another scene, John is having a dispute with his wife saying,You will not judge me

more, Elizabeth. I have good reason to think before I charge fraud on Abigail, and I will think on

it. Let you look to your own improvement before you go to judge your husband any more. I have

forgot Abigail, and. John is using a Red Herring to replace all of the negative attention off of

himself and on Elizabeth although his case is far more worse than his wifes.

In Arthur Millers, The Crucible, Miller provides the audience with two distinctive yet

allied characters that were associated with the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. These trials consisted

of a group of young girls in the Salem Village that claimed to be possessed by the devil and

accused several local women of witchcraft. These events ended with the deaths of twenty people

and the incarceration of ninety two people. These particular circumstances have impacted history

throughout the years and are still being implicated in todays society.
 Works Cited

The Crucible novel By: Arthur Miller

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