Reyes 1

Maria Reyes
English III Honors, Block 5
Mrs. Storer
September 24, 2019
Socratic Reflection on The Crucible
When looking back at how I prepared for this circle, I see how I missed so many details
and opportunity for analysis. I only answered the questions with surface level responses and did
not go deeper as others in my circle. However, I did write down quotes that I felt supported my
analysis, I felt this helped to back up the points I made. When I read the quotes, I remembered
what the notes meant, and I could use them to deepen my understanding and provide evidence
that my circle could refer to. Although I only spoke once, I feel like I highly contributed to the
circle’s conversation. I went against someone Tim’s point during the questioning of Abigail’s
victimization and used various pieces of evidence to back up my point. But most importantly, I
felt like I explained my thoughts so the circle could understand them clearly so they could build
upon them with ease. Also, I felt that I did a good job being the facilitator during the second
question of the circle, the debate about the feeling of catharsis, since I let people talk that had not
before. I did want to add on to the conversation, but I felt that it was better to let people voice
their opinions and at least participate once in the conversation. I would rate the teamwork I
employed in the inner circle highly as I built upon other people’s arguments and rebuted
someone else’s in other to bring that point of view into the conversation again. My outer circle
feedback was basic since my partners did a good job, but they were just missing textual
evidence. Their points were concrete, and they expressed them well, which I let them know;
however, they did not use textual evidence that would have their points stronger. My goals for
the next Socratic circle are to speak more and to be better prepared by making a deeper analysis.
Including my own preparation, I think most of my group did not prepare thoroughly and
just put together basic answers to each of the questions. However, this did not heavily impact the
quality of the conversation that we had, as I personally feel like my inner circle did a great job at
including both textual evidence and their own opinions to create solid answers to the questions
posed. I would rate the quality of the conversation highly but not give it a ten out of ten. The
high rating is due to the points made, the participation of everyone, the use of textual evidence,
and the teamwork displayed by the people in my inner circle. I would have liked for more
diverse opinions to be shared though. I feel like we just bounced back each other and only
provided evidence to the most common opinion, but a contradictory opinion would have made us
look at the text a different way. I am proud that the whole group contributed at least once, since I
know some people were nervous due to it being the first Socratic circle. I also really liked that
the contributions made by inner circle members were not basic ones. They would often
contribute evidence to back up someone else’s point and share new information to deepen the
conversation or show the members another way of looking at the text. The outer circle
participation, from what I saw, was basic. Often, the members of the outer circle would just tell
their partners to speak once to get it over with and then would not give them proper feedback, I
feel like I am guilty of this because I only told my partners to use evidence. However, this
pushed people to participate and get their ideas out there, even if they were not fully developed
 Reyes 2

thoughts. This helped keep the conversation going, making the outer circle’s feedback helpful to
the inner circle members.
Thesis: Although Abigail posed to be a victim, she was never a victim due to her selfish
motives, manipulative use of others, and the fact that she ran away from consequences.
Through an essay based of this thesis I would prove that Abigail Williams was never a
victim and should not be considered one. The first point I would make are the selfish motives she
had when she went through this lie that killed off many people. The biggest motive was to save
herself from being accused of witchcraft. Abigail did not care about how she was affecting the
people she was accusing, nor did she care about the deaths she was causing. The other selfish
motive she had was to make Proctor be with her again. This can be seen since the beginning
when the girls were the ones being accused of witchcraft and Betty said that Abigail drank blood
to kill Goody Proctor. Later in the novel this is shown again when Elizabeth Proctor is accused
by Abigail. She once again shows her selfish ways because she does not think about how much
grief John and his kids would go through if Elizabeth died. The second point can be clearly seen
through how Abigail manipulates the girls into going along with the witch trials. The clearest
example of this is when she uses Warren to continue her narrative, but when Warren is about to
dismantle everything Abigail is quick to turn on Warren and almost disposes of her. The use of
Warren shows how Abigail used the girls and manipulated them easily to make them add on to
the story she was creating. The last point I would back up with the last act, when Abigail ran
away after stealing all the money from her uncle. When Abigail saw her plan crumbling, she
decided to run away from the consequences. If she was a victim, she would not need to run away
and would instead stay in the town without fear of any repercussions.
Though this story seems too crazy to be relatable, I can unfortunately relate it to some of
my past friendships. I had lost contact with some of my closest childhood friends, and when I
tried to reconnect it felt like I was one the accused in The Crucible when they put all the blame
on me without any proof. They said that I never tried to reach out to them and that is why they
never tried to reach me. I felt so guilty and ended up believing them, just like the people of
Salem. However, I soon realized that the phone goes both ways and if they truly wanted to reach
out, they could do so. Plus, they made it seem like I was the only making new friends and
forgetting them, when they also had a new friend group and they were also partially guilty.
Though sad, I can relate to the townspeople when they believed that the witch trials were true,
and that the accused were truly guilty. I wish I could have been strong like Proctor and seen that
their accusation was not true. Luckily, I had friends with a Proctor-like mentality that helped me
clear my head and see how both parties were equally to blame.