Tituba Aye, sir, a good Christian woman.
Hale And you love these little children?
Tituba Oh, yes, sir, I don't desire to hurt little children.
Hale And you love God, Tituba?
In some of the climaxes she is present throughout the climax but for many of them it is just things that she has done or said that causes the tension. This shows the power that she has found herself in the play.
The language that she uses is archaic. This makes it sound old to us because it sounds and is read differently. Miller has made it sound old by using a number of devices. For example he uses a double negative. "He cannot find no medicine for it in his books." He also uses different ways to address people, like Goody instead of Mrs, Mister instead of Mr and when adults address a child they call them Child instead of their name. Another is when in an exciting or tense moment there is quite often some words that are skipped to make the points of tension move along faster and appear tenser. These devices made it sound strange to us so we think of it as old fashioned.
Abigail's language is at times quite violent showing her as a violent person. She threatens the girls by saying "I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you." This shows that she is violent and even threatens to possibly kill one of the other girls of they tell anyone that it did not have any thing to do with witch craft. This is also a line that Miller has made very striking in its description.
Abigail is a very powerful character. She is willing to do almost anything and lie to get her own way. She is quite disturbed, this is partly because she saw her parents being killed and also as she becomes so involved in the story she starts to lose control of things and everything just happens as though she isn't in control any more. The other people in the play appear afraid of her and are quite willing to believe her even if to us it appears that she is clearly lying. At the beginning of the play the audience likes her and believes what she is saying. But as the play progresses the audience turns away from and strongly dislikes her because of what she is doing to the people of the village.
At the beginning other characters regard Abigail as thought she has saved them from being witched. But they don't ever seem to realise that maybe she could lying. You learn this at the end when none of the villagers has questioned what is happening even when Abigail has run away. She has a big influence over the other characters, and they all are willing be believe her and protect and help to put an end to the 'spirits'. She has a particularly bad relationship with Elizabeth because she once had an affair with Proctor, and then tries to get Elizabeth hung so Abigail could have Proctor for herself and so this makes Elizabeth hate Abigail even more. This bad relationship, that Abigail has created, adds lots of tension to the play.
We can conclude that Miller has used Abigail in a very effective way to create dramatic tension. The main way he has done this is by creating the relationships between the characters, in particular the bad relationship between Abigail and Elizabeth is the thing that creates the most tension in the play. Abigail is a very strong character. She is quite violent and appears scary towards other characters. The language that she uses reflects her character quite well, she uses archaic language that sounds and reads differently to our English so it makes it sound old fashioned. The points of tension in the play are almost all created by or involve Abigail in some way, either what she has said or done.
