Crucible Essay

Christina Koehler

Honors American Literature

Mr. Provenzano 5^th hour

10 October 2011

Most Responsible for the Salem Witch Trials

            In modern day society, it is easy for children, even adults, to point the finger of blame on those they know are innocent. In Puritan society, this would be unthought-of considering God damns all liars. The Crucible is based around the theme of power, a common theme in many novels and plays. Who holds it, and why they hold are taken into consideration as Arthur Miller writes a play based on Puritan religious hysteria. Power is a dirty thing; it brings out envy and the worst in people. Many will go to great extents to have hold of it and some people go to the extent of death. This is what happens in The Crucible as the power shifts repeatedly and ends up in the hands of the children, the most unlikely to ever hold power. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, many are involved in the witch trials but Abigail, Parris, and Mary Warren should be held primarily responsible.

            No reader can talk about the predominant factors in the witch trials without mentioning Abigail Williams. As a reader, Abigail is the reader that everyone loves to hate but still loves because they have such strong emotions about her. Without Abigail, none of the rumors would have started in the first place. She only started accusing others to save herself and become the center of attention, which then grew into going after people for personal gain. The worst part about what Abigail does is that she knows what she is doing is wrong. In the first act, she even confesses to John Proctor “We were dancin’ in the woods last night, and my uncle leaped in on us. She took fright, is all” (Miller 22). Abigail knows that there is no witchcraft taking place in Salem and she knows that innocent people will die if accused, but she uses the people’s hysteria to increase her power. Worst of all, she is forcing others to hurt innocent people with her, she even tells the other girls, “We danced… And that is all…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 you…I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down” (Miller 20)! Abigail uses threats and intimidation to persuade people to join her cause, to join “the winning team.”

            There are some people that she does not have to convince though, and Parris is one of those people. Parris seems so minor when looking at the novel as a whole, but when personally investigating him readers realize just how big a part he played in the innocent deaths of many. Initially we know Parris as a leader, he is the leader of the church, but as the story evolves we realize just how little he is suited for the position. He is not a true leader, just a man who wants power and is in a leadership position. In truth, Parris gives all his power away when he calls in Hale to tell the people there is no witch in Salem, and ever since then he hands away his power in little increments. Readers can see just how useless and pathetic he is when he asks the judges if he may interrogate Mary Warren, and the judges give him a firm and abrupt answer that implies how insignificant he is in their eyes. The judges answer was a no, a mocking of course not. In the judges’ minds, Parris is not powerful or smart enough to get anything of value out of Mary Warren. Parris is only a man who power and is willing to do anything to receive it, but in striving to gain power he gives away the little that he had.

            On the other hand, there is Mary Warren who never dreamt of having power because power means having to make decisions of her own. If there is one character to pity it is Mary Warren, but only because she is so senseless. Mary Warren cannot stand up for herself on any occasion, and even when she tries to show a semblance of self-respect it is crushed by her cowardly nature. She is the epitome of pathetic and is a follower down to the core. Not only is she a follower, but she is indecisive as to who she should follower. Abigail is her first leader, but by the end of the second act she is forced to follow John Proctor and help him save his wife. The only decision that Mary ever makes in the book is when she rips herself away from team John and decides she is on team Abby, but only to save herself from narrowly being accused by the girls. On many occasion, if Mary had just stepped up and answered directly both the readers and Salem would have been spared a longer, more painful, drawn out process. When Cheever showed up to take away Elizabeth Proctor for stabbing Abigail and found a poppet, if Mary had just stood up and said “Yes that was mine, I put the needle in the side for safe keeping and forgot I had put it there,” then Salem would have been saved a whole lot of trouble. Instead when Proctor asks her if the needle was hers and if she put it there she replies “I-I believe I did, sir, I-“(Miller 72). If Mary Warren had been just the slightest bit smarter, than a good fraction of the people who had died for their silence would have lived.

            Although many people could be held accountable for the Salem witch trials, Abigail, Parris, and Mary Warren are the biggest factors in the deaths of so many innocent people. Each of them had reasons for committing such a terrible crime, some reasons even being semi-understandable, but that does not compensate for taking an innocent human life away. Abigail used her power in vain so that she could “win” the man she loved. Parris gave away his power so that he could keep what little order he had left in the church, and Mary Warren had never had power so she did what she knew best and followed the strongest power pulling on her at the time. Every one of them had understandable but poor reasons for letting the witch trials go on for so long, and they will be the ones who rot in Hell, not those that they accused. Those that they accused and hanged, hanged for silence, were the true instruments of God. They were God’s instrument in helping the world walk out of its darker days of ignorance and into the new days of light and truth.