The context of the play as a whole creates tension because the events in Acts 1 and 2 are a build up to the tragedy that happens in Act 3, where Mary is forced to make a decision that could be the difference between life and death. A tragedy is inevitable from the end of Act 3. This builds up tension because the audience want to know what John Proctor will choose, and what will happen because of his choice. Act 3 is all about the conflict between truth and lies and this creates a lot of tension for the audience, wondering what choices each character will make and how it will affect the plot, the other characters and their future.
The ordering of events creates tension because the audience don’t know what will happen, what twists and turns the play will take and what unexpected things will happen. For example when Abigail is accused of being an adulteress the audience is on the edge of their seats, to know what will become of her now, when suddenly she sees a ”yellow bird” sent by Mary, which is completely unexpected and unusual. The audience is desperate to know what is going to happen next and this builds up tension. In the first half of Act 3 the tension slowly builds up and then in the second half there is a sudden increase of tension, and then it reaches a dramatic climax before Act 3 ends.
Arthur Miller’s language builds up tension because he uses onomatopoeia, alliteration, repeated words and short powerful lines to get his point across. For example he uses onomatopoeia when Danforth tells the other girls that if Mary had been lying then “her neck will break for it.”(This is onomatopoeic because Danforth is emphasising the k at the end of neck and break so it sounds like a neck breaking.) This creates tension because this statement puts fear into the girls, the fear of being hung. The audience can see this fear and so they want to know what the girls will do now. He uses alliteration when Proctor says that Abigail would “Suck a scream to stab me with”. This creates tension because the other characters can tell from Proctor’s words that Abigail really would and could do this. Further tension is created for the audience as they want to know what Abigail and the other characters will do. Miller uses repeated words and phrases to emphasize the point and purpose of the statement or word. For example both Danforth and Proctor repeat “God damns all liars” many times to remind the girls (and the others) that they should not lie because God will damn them. This creates tension because Proctor and Danforth are two of the most important characters, in Act 3, and both characters want Mary to tell the truth but their versions of the truth are very different. The audience wonders which “truth” Mary will tell and wonder what the consequences will be. The strongest way that Miller creates tension is by using short powerful lines, and the force of words to try to knock over a character and make them see the error of their ways. For example “It is a whore.” is much more powerful than “I am an adulterer and Abigail was my mistress.” The audience is shocked by these powerful sentences, just as much as the other characters are, and then, with this new astounding revelation, they are eager to know what will happen next.
The different motivations of the characters create tension throughout Act 3 because there is a lot of dramatic irony. Examples of this dramatic irony are when the girls are pointing at the “yellow bird” and the judge group onstage think that there is really a “yellow bird” that is going to swoop down and attack the girls but the audience knows that they are pretending to see it and that there is no “yellow bird”. The characters’ motivations create a lot of tension in Act 3 because each character wants to gain something different from these witch trials. For example Danforth, Hathorne and, pre-act 3, Hale all want to find and remove the cause of all the bad things that had been happening in Salem. Proctor, in Act 3, wants to prove his wife’s innocence and that Abigail is lying to benefit herself. Abigail, who was enjoying the attention in the previous acts, wants to remove the people who she doesn’t like and who don’t like her so that people will respect her in the village and so that she can be with John Proctor. This creates tension because of the dramatic irony of the audience knowing what each character wants, no matter how sinister, and the other characters not realising, and wondering how they will go about getting it and if they will be successful or not.
The whole play is based on dramatic irony because the play is about all the characters on the stage hunting for a witch but we, as the audience, know that there is no witch and that they are just using the witch as a proverbial scapegoat to explain the things which they cannot naturally explain. This creates tension throughout the entire play because the audience wants to know whether they will ever find out this important fact of whether they will insist on blaming the scapegoat so that they are not proved to have been wrongfully accusing innocent people of witchcraft.
The staging throughout Act 3 builds up a lot of tension because it tells the audience about what the characters are thinking or feeling at that moment. It helps to make actions and events clearer and more vivid. One example of the effective staging in Act 3 is when the “yellow bird” is perched on the rafter beam and about to fly down to attack and the girls are all crouching in a corner of the room covering their faces. The other characters are standing up and looking up at, what appears to them, the empty rafter beam. This creates tension because the girls are portraying fear and that they are children by covering their faces and being, physically, lower down- this makes them appear vulnerable and as though they need protecting from this “yellow bird”. The characters standing up are like pillars of strength who do not need the protecting that the girls need, the audience, unlike many characters onstage, know that the girls are lying and so do not feel the need to protect the girls. The characters who don’t know the girls are lying are strong dominant characters so they often overpower the opposition and it seems as though the whole town are scared for the children.
Another example of the staging is when Elizabeth Proctor is being questioned and Proctor and Abigail have to turn their backs to her. The audience can see their faces and expressions but the other characters cannot. This also brings Elizabeth to the centre of attention. The audience know what they are thinking and feeling but the other characters don’t know this and they don’t know what the others want them to do. This makes the audience want to know what will happen next.
Shifting the attention to and from pivotal characters creates tension because it makes the plot unpredictable. For example when Abigail is accused of being an adulteress, all the attention of the characters and audience is focused on her. Suddenly she “sees” a “yellow bird” sent by Mary and in doing so shifts all the attention to Mary and the girls as a group, who are seeing the “yellow bird”. Abigail is very good at shifting the attention from herself to the present scapegoat. Other characters throughout the play seize the attention from another character and put the attention where they want it. For example, at the end of the “yellow bird” scene Mary takes the attention from the girls who are watching the “yellow bird” and puts it onto Proctor by saying;
“Don’t touch me- don’t touch me!”…”You’re the Devil’s man!” This sudden outburst from an otherwise quiet and gentle character draws the attention to her and she transfers it onto Proctor.
Since reading The Crucible I have had a recurring dream where a new pupil at school has the gift of being able to read people’s minds and can reveal their innermost thoughts and secrets to everyone else in the school. This, for me, is a modern day parallel because I think that in The Crucible the worst part of the witch trials is that the people of Salem can have no secrets and everything is exposed to a committee of judges. I would hate the idea of everyone in a small community, like Salem, to know everything that I have done in the past and to be able to pass judgement on me without ever meeting me or knowing the circumstances. This makes me feel a great deal of sympathy for John and Elizabeth Proctor because in a matter of weeks they went from being upstanding important members of the community to prisoners in their own town jail. The part that created the most tension throughout act 3, for me, was when John Proctor said “It is a hoar.”
