“Mary Warren [Pointing at Proctor]: You’re the devils man!”
Knowing that if she told the court this John Proctor will be hanged. She is just as selfish as Abigail Williams; whatever keeps her in the right place she would also do anything to get there, for example lying all the time just so she doesn’t get in trouble. She didn’t have to say John Proctor is a witch to protect herself, yet she is too foolish to know what to say, and because the girls was scaring and repeating everything after her, she probably wasn’t thinking about what she was saying and just said it out. It was fear. She knew he was going to be hanged and she still didn’t confess that she was lying. If she hadn’t spoken a word, John Proctor wouldn’t even be suspected of being a witch. You can already see that her attempt through her testimony, to name Abigail as a fraud failed, so even if she confessed it won’t make much difference to save John Proctor. Abigail Williams would be there to stop her anyways.
Mary Warren had lied about John Proctor and got him hanged to save her life. She didn’t do it with intention. But she did do it. Mary Warren is to blame for John Proctors deaths, because even if the whole hysteria continued, John Proctor wouldn’t have died if she didn’t say John Proctor is a witch.
Here we have the Judiciary, Judge Hathorn, and Deputy Governor Danforth. Yes they are doing their job (partly) and everything they say may seem right whatever the case, because it is the rule, and you cannot say it’s the rules fault so there was no choice but to go ahead with the proceedings.
When the Judges had decided to hang John Proctor, even though they were in doubt, they really couldn’t be bothered less about who got hanged as long as nothing affected the court, and themselves.
They say that if Proctor confessed he wouldn’t have to be hanged. This showed that they didn’t really care if he was a witch or not just as long as he would admit he is just to prove something. This shows how careless they are about this case, and should have at least considered that the girls may be lying. After all they are the Judges and no one could disagree with them unless they want to get in trouble. But these judges really want this over and done with so the way they solved it was just to hang everyone who was suspected of being a witch, so for doing this they are partly to blame for John Proctors death. The Judges are the one who are responsible for Proctors life. Proctor being dead or alive was up to them really. And they choose to hang him.
Even though Tituba only had a small part in the play she had said one of the main things that also started off this witchery nonsense. She was the one who blamed Goody Good, and Goody Osbourne for being a witch, and she was the one who lied and said she witnessed it.
“No, no, don’t hang Tituba! I tell him I don’t desire to work for him sir”
P 46
“Mister Reverend, I do believe somebody else be witching these children.”
P 47
“And then he come one stormy nigh to me and say ‘look! I have white people
belong to me’ And I look-and there was Goody Good!”
Even though Abigail Williams started off witchery by drinking blood to kill Elizabeth, she only blamed Tituba for the cause of it. Tituba started to blame innocent people who weren’t even involved just to save her own life. This gave an idea to Abigail Williams the idea to do so too, to get Elizabeth in trouble of witchery. If Tituba didn’t start to talk about the devil and blame people, would the Judges be on a search for witches? Then the thought of witches wouldn’t occur unless later on Abigail went to accuse people but in the story this didn’t happen. So then Elizabeth wouldn’t be accused and then John wouldn’t go to court to save his wife and his friends Goody Good and Goody Osbourne. So Tituba was also partly to blame for the cause o John Proctors death.
Elizabeth Proctor whilst trying to save her husband got him into more trouble by lying in court when John Proctor confessed to the Judges about his affair with Abigail, that Abigail is a whore “It is a whore!” and Elizabeth who is a Christian will tell the truth about it all “In her life sir she has never lied”, but Elizabeth not knowing what to do and thinking she might get her husband into more trouble and blacken his name she lied about it which meant that John Proctor couldn’t be save. But this doesn’t mean Elizabeth wasn’t to blame for his death, because it only meant she couldn’t save him, but if she did say the truth people would be thinking why should we believe a whore and probably people could be saved and this case will be dismissed but what Tituba had said would probably be believed. Even if Elizabeth didn’t say anything, there still wouldn’t be any difference; John Proctor would have still died. But we could say that if Elizabeth wasn’t there Abigail wouldn’t have wanted to kill Elizabeth, and then witchery wouldn’t have happened so maybe Elizabeth Proctor was also to blame for John Proctors death.
John Proctor, he started having an affair with Abigail whilst she was working for Elizabeth. If John Proctor didn’t have an affair with Abigail, she wouldn’t have suddenly fallen in love with him. The affair encouraged her to get her own way just to be with him and because of this she wants to kill Elizabeth so she could be with John Proctor. So if John didn’t have an affair with Abigail in the first place would anything have started? And also if he didn’t go to court to try and save his friend and wife would he have died? He wouldn’t have gotten in so much trouble and gotten himself killed if he just thought of another plan, but if it wasn’t him who died it was his wife, he really didn’t have much choice. Because of going to court and trying to save his wife and friends this got him into his own death, so John Proctor was partly to blame for it also.
In the crucible, it was a lot of people to blame, everyone could have save John in their own ways, for example if the people in the crucible didn’t believe Abigail and protested against Johns death instead, the Judges couldn’t do anything but let him go, because they wouldn’t want the court looking bad. So mostly everyone was to blame for John Proctors death.