The hangings appear first in Abigail’s life, for she is one of the first accused of witchcraft, as soon as she is accused she blames Tituba for everything ‘She made me do it, she made Betty do it, she made me drink blood’. From this all blame and attention was directly turned to Tituba, when Tituba lies to safe her life from being whipped to death by Parris ‘I will whip you to death’ Abigail straight away understands that she can get out of the situation by lying also, and so she lies to Parris and all the people there saying she had done the devils work. Since the community is very superstitious they believed Abigail. From this Abigail learns that she can manipulate the town by lying, she tries to use the town fear to her advantage. Since everyone believes Abigail, and they are all dying to know who the devils works they are willing to believe anything she says. Abigail first of all starts maliciously attacking the outcasts of society like Goody Osbourn who is a beggar. Gradually as the play progresses Abigail starts to gain more power, for she starts to accuse the more important figureheads in the village. As you can see that Abigail at the start experiences total power, her response to this is to take full advantage of it, and she continues to lie and manipulate events to get it in her favour. She believes that she can get Proctor to fall in love with her, and so she accuses his wife Elizabeth. She also experiences fear, but not by feeling it herself but seeing it through others, and so she responds my using it to her advantage like I said before.
The hangings come to John Proctor a little later on, because firstly Proctor wants nothing to do with the hangings, because he knows that Abigail is ‘Playing tricks on everyone’, but he doesn’t say anything, since he had an affair with her and he doesn’t want his name sullied in the community. Proctor only starts to interfere in the hangings when he hears that his wife has been accused by Abigail, furthermore his friends wives have also been accused. At that moment Proctor tries to stop the hangings by getting petitions from people, and he believes that he can stop the hangings. But when the judges don’t accept the petition, and he sees that his friend’s wives are still to hang he tries to tell the truth and expose Abigail for who she really is. As you can see Proctor experiences an unjust method of judging people, he also experiences what happens when the wrong sort of people have power over everyone as well, furthermore he sees a community hysterically afraid. From this you can see that Proctor tries to respond to the court by overcoming the hangings by telling the truth rather than lying.
After a while Proctor is accused accidentally by the frantic Mary Warren of doing work for the devil ‘He come to me every night to sing the devils book’. At the start he believes that no one will believe her, but when Danforth believes Mary ‘You are combined with anti Christ’ He is so angry that he loses faith in the court altogether. From this he experiences an unfair and unjust society, he sees the people who cant turn back upon their flaws like judge Danforth, and he sees how this whole court and trial was all just a complete sham to get other peoples houses, we know that he has fears of this right from the start, but know his fears are confirmed. Proctors response to everything that he has experiences is to tell the truth, rather than to lie and get his life back, but also to take control like Abigail did.
From all of this we can see that Proctor and Abigail share some similar experiences, for they both see the wrong people come to power, they see innocent people tried and hanged, and also they see a community bordering on the edge of madness out of fear. Proctor’s responses to this is to try and stop the hangings by telling the truth, he even sticks to the truth right until the end, even if it means he will be hanged, although he doesn’t care so much at the end he is still willing to tell the truth to redeem himself for his affair with Abigail, and also because he ‘Wont be able to look into his friends eyes’ If he doesn’t.
However the same cannot be said for Abigail, because she also sees what Proctor sees, but she sees that she can take power and make events go to her advantage. Her response to the hangings is to manipulate weak people like Danforth and Paris who are trying to keep their heads from sinking in the water along with the trial, for this she is prepared to lie, and she is ruthlessly remorseless, for she doesn’t care what happens to the innocent as long as she gets what she wants.
As you can see both characters see what is happening in the trial, and the hangings, however from then on they are completely different, for one tries to stop the court by telling the truth, whilst the other one seeks to make it press on with the hanging, and get power out of this.
