Since John and Abigail’s relationship, Elizabeth fired her and hired a new servant called Mary Warren.
Although Mary is part of the group of girls, she doesn’t really want to accuse other people of being witches, but Abigail is a very forceful person who can get what she wants with most people.
Mary had a little voodoo doll that she had made. Abigail tells Mary to give it to Elizabeth to make it look as though it’s hers. Mary did as she was told and gave it to her. Elizabeth didn’t realize it was a trick so she kept it. The audience now has more bad feelings towards Abigail. She’s being so cruel to so many people. Not just the people she’s accusing, but also the girls in her group. We are now worried for Elizabeth’s sake as we know that if anyone sees she has a voodoo doll, she will probably be arrested.
The audience is now gripped into the story. Questions are buzzing in our heads. Will Elizabeth get caught? What will happen if she does?
During Act 2, Reverend Hale arrives at the Proctor’s house, to let them know that Elizabeth’s name has been mentioned by Abigail. The girls already know this though, as Mary had already let them know of this information. Reverend Hale starts questioning both John and Elizabeth about their Christianity. Whilst Hale is at their house, Cheever, Francis, Giles and Herrick all arrive. They search the Proctors’ house and find the voodoo doll with a needle stuck in it. Elizabeth is arrested and taken away.
At this point, we still have many questions, so our interest is still held. We want to know what’s going to happen to Goody Proctor. Will she be found guilty of what they’re accused for. How will the village react?
Act 3 starts with a court scene. Giles Corey’s wife is having a witch trial. Whilst the court is in session, Giles runs into the court saying that he has new evidence. They all go into a different room and start discussing what they think. Francis tells Danforth that he thinks that all the girls are frauds. Proctor and Mary enter the room and Proctor starts to tell Danforth what Mary told him. “She never saw no spirits, sir,” he said.
Mary tells Danforth that they were all pretending to see spirits. Danforth is annoyed that his court has been disrupted so he tries to get Proctor to drop the charge. He tells Proctor that his wife is pregnant (which is true), and that if he drops the charge, they would still have a year together. It was a hard decision for Proctor, but he decided not to take the offer.
Later on in the scene, Giles got arrested for refusing to say the name of someone who was crucial evidence.
The subject goes back to Mary telling Danforth that she was pretending to see spirits. Danforth calls for the other girls.
Five of the girls enter as the other ones cannot be found. They sit down and Danforth starts to tell them what Mary said. After he finishes, Abigail tells him that it’s all lies. I think that Danforth doesn’t want to believe that the girls are lying because he’ll then know that he’s put a lot of people to their death unnecessarily.
Hathorne, another judge, then starts to question Mary. He asks her how she fainted and went icy cold. Mary just tells him that “They were pretence, sir.” Hathorne then told her to faint there and then. If she could do it before, he says that there would be no problem doing it again. She tries but she really can’t so it, “I have no sense of it now.”
Suddenly, all the girls start to pretend that the room is turning icy cold. Everyone thinks they’re telling the truth though. The start to blame Mary for what’s happening to them, “Mary, do you send this shadow on me?”
Abigail then starts yelling to God for his help, “Heavenly Father, take away this shadow!”
Proctor feels totally infuriated at this and he hurriedly goes over to Abigail and starts yelling at her and calling her names, “How do you call heaven? Whore Whore!”
Danforth asks why and to show she is a whore and Proctor just replies with “I have known her,” (had relations with her) He then explains how that is why his wife fired Abigail.
Within a few minutes, Goody Proctor is brought into the court.
Our attention has been held throughout this Act so far because we want to know, will Abigail get into trouble finally? Now Proctor has brought up that she’s a whore, we are wondering what his wife will say. Will she tell the truth or lie? It would definitely impossible for us to put the book down anywhere during this Act because it’s all very exciting.
When Elizabeth arrives at the court, both Abigail and John are asked to turn away from her so she can’t interact with them.
After having many questions fired at her, she finally tells Danforth that he didn’t cheat on her. (Abigail hadn’t realized he’d confessed). Elizabeth is removed from the court.
Suddenly, again, all the girls start screaming and pointing to the ceiling, where they say there’s a yellow bird. Again, they blame Mary for what’s happening, “Mary, please don’t hurt me!” When Mary starts to talk, all the girls repeat exactly what she says.
When Mary hears that she will be hanged unless she confesses, she decides to go against Proctor and join the girls. She says “You’re the devils man!” whilst pointing at John.
The scene ends with Proctor being taken to jail.
The audience is wondering what’s going to happen to Proctor and his wife. We’ve grown to really like Proctor and admire him for standing up to Abigail. We don’t want Proctor to hang, or his wife, so we really want to read onto the next act to find out what will be done to them.
Proctor and Elizabeth had not seen each other for about 3 months. Proctor is due to hang unless he confesses, so Elizabeth and he are allowed to see each other and have a chat.
They talk for what seems like a long time, talking about their children and their child to be. After a while, Proctor brings up that he’s thinking of confessing. Elizabeth shows no emotion whatsoever, so he asks her what she thinks of it. She just replies with “I cannot judge you, John.” Their conversation continues until he finally decides to confess, “I want my Life,” he yelled.
The audience feels very happy that he’s decided to save his life. We hope it’s going to be a happy ending for the Proctors’.
All the judges and witnesses are also extremely happy that he’s going to confess and save his life. He has to sign a document to agree that he is confessing. After he signs it, though, he suddenly snatches it out of Danforth’s hand.
The audience is now very anxious about what Proctor is going to do.
Proctor decides he doesn’t want everyone to know that he gave in. He keeps on saying “Because it’s my name.” This is the reason he doesn’t want to sign it anymore.
He rips up the document with no looking back, then is taken away for his ultimate punishment, to be hung.
The audience is very unhappy that Proctor died even though he didn’t do a thing wrong, but we also admire him for sticking to what he believed in.
The main stereotype of John is that he’s a hard working, family man, who is respected by the community and has a strong manly character. We first hear of him working on the farm, showing that he works hard.
He loves his wife and spends time with her and the children. He reads from the bible to them, showing that he’s a Christian. When we hear he’s a Christian, we immediately assume that he does what’s right and he tries to say and do the best things he can.
He works hard in his marriage and still carries on with it, even though Elizabeth doesn’t show the same amount of care towards him.
This stereotype is challenged throughout the play, though. He had had an affair with Abigail. This goes against Christian beliefs and challenges the fact that he’s a good family man.
At the end, when he first decided that he was going to lie and choose his life and family over his beliefs, this potentially would lose the respect of the community, but it showed that he was a family man, because the reason he was doing it, was to spend more time with his family. In the end, though, he changes his mind and decides to go along with his beliefs.
This doesn’t matter to Elizabeth, though, because she knows he chose to be hung to keep his respect and honour. As he went, she said “He have all his goodness now, God forbid I take it from him!”
As John had this stereotype, throughout the play our interest was held because we were always wondering if he was going to go against it, or stick to it. Especially at the end, we had no idea which way he was going to go. He either stayed with his family and lost respect, or kept his respect and left his family. We were very anxious about what he was going to do.
Abigail’s stereotype is one of a flirty teenager, with a very strong mind. She had a dominant personality and she was the leader of all the girls of her age in the village.
She flirted with Proctor throughout the play but was rejected each time. As she had a strong mind, and she knew what she wanted, she still tried and tried to win his love but failed every time.
The fact that she was a leader of all the girls was challenged when Mary went against her and told the court the truth about all the lies she was spreading. When Mary was asked how they all fainted she replied with “Pretence, Sir.”
In the end, though, Abigail’s strong character managed to get Mary back on her side with Mary crying “Abby, Abby, I’ll hurt you no more.”
I think one of the ways Abigail managed to get people on her side was by being very intimidating. She said things which made the girls not want to go against her. Earlier on in the play, she said to them “I can make you wish you’d never seen the sun go down.”
Abigail’s stereotype doesn’t really have many challenges that arise at all throughout the play.
Out interest is held because we are always wondering if she’ll be able to stick to her stereotype right through. When Betty goes against her, we wonder if any other girls will too, but she manages to keep them on her side and stay as the leader. We are always wondering if John Proctor will weaken and fall for Abigail because she was so flirtatious, but nothing ever happens.
Throughout the play, Abigail tried to win John Proctor for herself. They once had a sexual relationship, and, although Abigail wanted it to continue, John wanted to totally forget about it and stay with his wife and children.
The first time we see Abigail flirting with John is quite near the beginning. Abigail said things in a seductive way to try and weaken him, she said “Give me a word. A soft word.” John stayed strong and managed to overlook it. He tried to keep her away and he said “Abby, put it out of your mind. I’ll not be comin’ for you more.”
This scene really shows how both Abigail and John are very strong in their stereotype. Abigail is being very flirty and John is trying to keep himself respected and rejects her ways to stay with his family.
Even though Abigail had been rejected, she didn’t want to give in. She realized that if Elizabeth was out of the picture, she’d have a much bigger chance of getting together with John. So, she decided to say Elizabeth was with the devil.
This infuriated John so much, that he even told the judges that she’s only doing this because she had ‘known him’ and she still wanted him.
He supported this point by saying “A man will not cast away his good name. You surely know that.”
We, as an audience were always in suspense with the relationship between John and Abigail because we were always wondering if Abigail would be able to weaken John because she has such a strong personality. Luckily, she never won him and John left with his head held up high.
During ‘The Crucible,’ John and Elizabeth’s relationship changes rapidly. In the first scene where they’re together eating, you can see that Elizabeth has still not got over the affair that John had with Abigail, even though John is trying as hard as he can to please her. John tries to ask her questions such as “Are you well today.” Elizabeth makes a minimal response to most of the questions he asks her such as “I am,” and “It would.”
Later on in the film, they become closer. At the end of Act 3 where it is Elizabeth’s court scene, Elizabeth tries to keep her husband out of trouble by telling the first lie she’s ever told in her life. This shows that she would sacrifice something she’s managed to keep all her life for John. This means she must have forgiven him.
Right at the end of the play, John finds it extremely hard to chose between family and respect. This shows he really, really cares about her because respect is something that John really appreciated.
Before John is taken away, Elizabeth and himself share a ‘kiss with great passion.’
When John dies, we know that their relationship ended happily.
Our interest is held throughout because we never know if their relationship is going to get better. We know that if John gives up on Elizabeth, he is more likely to go with Abigail, so these two relationships have been very important to hold our interest right through this play.
The main theme of this play is witchcraft. This play really helps us to understand people’s views of witchcraft in the past. We are able to see how much people were against any form of it. We realize how severe the punishments were and how seriously people took it if there was a slight chance you were performing witchcraft.
This theme keeps our interest held because as most of us don’t know much about the punishments and the feelings of people towards it, we keep on reading it because we want to know what’s going to happen next.
Another main theme of this play is how strict people were on sticking with the church. Everyone had to know their ten commandments and had to attend church regularly. Everyone followed whatever it said in the bible. If anyone went against the ways of the bible, it would definitely be frowned upon in the village. The church had the most power over the village as it did in many villages at that time. In the play, they take it very seriously when Proctor hasn’t been to church very regularly. He’d only been twenty-six times in seventeen months. That was considered to be very small number of times to have gone.
The fact that the church had most power was very important in keeping our interest because we wanted to know if anyone would be able to go against the Bible’s ways and get away with it. It was very different for us to read because nowadays, there are so many religions that the church rarely has the most power over towns and villages so it was very interesting for us to read about people’s views about it and hear about how strict they were to keep to the commandments.
The other main theme of the play is love and emotion. There are many relationships that occur during the play. The main two I have mentioned but there are others. Another one is the relationship between Mary and Proctor. Mary does whatever Proctor wants her to do, but in the end, she follows Abigail. All these relationships keep us in suspense all the way through because we never know if they’re going to end happily or not. There are always surprises with relationships. We already knew that before we read the book, so we know that there will be some surprises during the book. This makes us want to read on to see when they’re going to occur and what the outcome is going to be.
I think the Daniel Day-Lewis version of the play really managed to get the set of the play well. I thought that they made the village, the houses and the church look just how Arthur Miller would have wanted it to look
At the beginning of the film, I liked the way you saw the girls coming out from all different place secretly. The camera shows the girls getting ready then sneaking out until they all meet together. I thought this was very clever and it already caused suspense because we were wondering if they were going to get caught.
I think that because Arthur really described what he wanted at the beginning of each act, it shouldn’t be changed in the film because he obviously spent a lot of time wondering about how to start each act off. I like the way Elizabeth’s footsteps are heard so John’s able to put everything back where it was. It shows that he really doesn’t want to upset her at the moment. The way he’s done this makes us see there’s some tension between them which is definitely what Arthur will have wanted us to see.
Arthur had the idea of not being able to see the people whilst they talk at the beginning of this act. I don’t think this works incredibly well because we want to be able to feel the suspense inside the courtroom so we can see how seriously it’s all being taken. Although we see it later on, I think it would be better if we felt the tension right from the beginning of the act. They do this in the Daniel Day-Lewis version and I think it works really well.
I think the way act 4 is described at the beginning is very good. It should be shown exactly as it is written. It really sounds quite scary when he describes the cell. I think it would look very spine-chilling on a set if it was staged how he described it!
Nowadays, I think if people were found performing witchcraft, although some people wouldn’t agree with what they’re doing, we wouldn’t want to hang them because it. More people are becoming interested in religions such as Wicca, so witchcraft it becoming a lot more common.
I think the fact that witchcraft more common nowadays adds interest to the play because the way they’re reacting to it is totally different to how we would act towards it nowadays. It’s very interesting to see how people in those days felt about it!
I think the way Arthur often describes how the characters speaks helps us to understand the feelings of the people in the play.
Arthur Miller makes the characters use the kind of language they would be using in those days. The helps us remember whilst we’re reading it about the time it was set in so we can relate to how they felt then, to how we would feel now.
We’re always thinking about how we would feel in the situations they’re in, so out interest is always held throughout. We have so many thoughts, stimulated from just a few points in the play.
I think you have to be careful about how many people are on stage when directing plays.
An example of a time where there are only two people on stage is when John and Elizabeth are having a meal together. I think just having these two people on stage creates a better atmosphere than if their children were there too. It creates more tension between them.
In the scene where Martha Corey’s being charged of doing witchcraft, there are many people on stage which creates a better atmosphere than if there were only a few people in the room. This helps us see the feelings of everyone in the village, as they’re all there shouting at her, telling her what they think. Everyone’s trying to get their point across all at once so it all seems exciting.
It shows us how totally different it is to a court scene nowadays. Everyone is in order and no one in the stands is allowed to speak out of line. It has a bigger sense of discipline than Arthur shows in ‘The Crucible.’
In Elizabeth’s court scene, I like the way it’s set in the Daniel Day-Lewis version. I like the way that the camera is on Elizabeth the whole time, so you can see her expressions. You can see her eyes often try to make contact with John. I like how you can see the desperation in her eyes and yet she speaks so calmly.
Staging is a big part of getting the mood right. The audience will want to feel tension in some places, and not so much in other places. If you get it right, the audience’s interest will be held for longer.
I think Arthur Miller has written an excellent play which really holds the audience’s interest all the way through. There isn’t one place in the book where your head isn’t filled with questions. It makes us want to read on to find out what’s going to happen next.
I think I have proved with all my points that Arthur Miller has done everything he possibly could to make this an interesting, exciting book which keeps us in suspense.
All the relationship problems, witchcraft problems and other things that went on made Elizabeth’s court scene exciting and upsetting. Our emotions went on a roller coaster whilst reading this book. At some places we felt angry, such as when Abigail was lying. Sometimes we felt anxious when we didn’t know what was going to happen between the different relationships.
The main place where we felt extremely emotional was right at the end when Proctor decided to die with his head held up high. He kept his authority and respect, even though it meant losing his life.
I really enjoyed this book, which raised lots of interesting questions, and I think Arthur Miller did a wonderful job writing it!