Essay/Term paper: The crucible: the evilness and selfishness of abigail williams

Essay, term paper, research paper:  The Crucible

The Crucible: The Evilness and Selfishness of Abigail Williams


In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, there is one character who, because of
her selfish and evil ways, causes the destruction of many people in the town of
Salem. This character is Abigail Williams. In the play, jealousy, and self-
interest are the two characteristics that are seen constantly throughout the
play. These characteristics pertain particularly to Abigail, and give a graphic
description of her life, and how she deals with things in it. Throughout the
play she gets worse and worse each time something major happens.
After her affair and failure with voodoo, she was overcome by love and
jealousy, and she was willing to do anything to get John back to her own self.
Since she was overcome, she had no concern with morals, and starts to sin
heavily by starting the witch trials, which causes the deaths of many people in
the town. Abigail doesn't want anyone to find out that she was in the forest so
she harshly threatens Betty Paris and Mary Warren not to say anything. "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... And you know I can do it... I can make you
wish you had never seen the sun go down."
She fell in love with John Proctor after their affair, her morals and
her whole life began to fall apart. She started to be overcome with her feelings
of love, and her passion for John was enormous. After she was denied these
things she could no longer control herself, and her whole reason for living
became to get back John. This shows that when a person is given something, which
they enjoy, and even love, and they are denied it, they feel distraught and they
will many times do almost anything to get it back.
She was very desperate and she felt willing to do anything to get back
John for herself. She had been brought up to believe that magic worked, so she
turned to Tituba and her voodoo. Abigail begged her for her help in that matter,
This is shown when Tituba says, "You beg me to conjure! She beg me to make
charm-" Abigail was so desperate to get back John that she even drank chicken's
blood to get him back. She drank this blood charm so Elizabeth would die.
Abigail's progression of evilness and her looking for help from witchcraft shows
that love and jealousy in large quantities can cause a person to go to what they
hate most for help. Abigail goes from her goodness with internal turmoil, to
what she was brought up in Salem to fear, and despise: witchcraft.
After some thought Abigail realizes that she can use witchcraft to get
back John, though not in the way that she had thought before. She believes that
the only reason that John is not giving in to her is because of Elizabeth. She
realizes that the people of the town are so afraid of the devil, she can use
that fear to discredit, and eventually get rid of Elizabeth, thereby getting
John for herself. She also realizes that if she right away accuses Elizabeth,
the people would not believe her because Elizabeth is too pious. She decides
that if she starts with evil people, and works her way up to the more pious ones
to, finally, Elizabeth she will be believed. This chain of reasoning causes the
deaths of many of the townspeople in Salem. Many people in the town of Salem
think Abigail's doing the right thing by accusing all these people. They don't
know of Abigail's scheme and encourages that these witches be given their due
punishment. Reverend Hale has a conflict with Abigail's doings but not for the
same reason as John Proctor. Hale knows that Abigail is purging and he really
tries to prevent innocent lives being wasted. John wants to stop Abigail so he
can save his wife. Hale wants to save innocent lives from being unreasonably
killed. Hale is a great man who tries to save lives but John was the opposite
and is selfish by just caring about his wife's life. At the end of the play,
however, John realizes his selfishness and dies while saving his honesty.
Abigail's actions show that once a person begins to do evil things, and
sins, it becomes almost second nature, and they don't really mind it so much. In
time they even don't care at all, and they may even continue to do sins just for
the fun of it. This is shown when Abigail continues to sin, and continues the
witch trials even after she realizes that the plan she hatched to kill Elizabeth
didn't work, and she had not planned to have her love, John, killed.
From Abigail's actions we learn that a person shouldn't base their whole
life on one love or a feeling of jealousy. If they do they can change their
whole life for the far worse. For example, Abigail started to become a complete
villain and the whole course of everyone's life in Salem was changed for the
worse or terminated all together because of her selfishness. We should all learn
to not hook onto any one individual because there are many other fish in the sea.
Besides the fact that it can ruin your life on a personal level it can ruin many
of the people that you deal with on a everyday basis.