Abigail Essay, Research Paper

Thursday 3rd December

The Crucible Essays

Abigail Williams

Abigail’s importance in the play is that without her the play would not exist. The play

starts with the girls of the village dancing naked in the woods with a fire burning.

Then the girls are caught and they all run away. Whilst at this meeting Abigail drinks

the blood of a chicken. Her reasons for doing this are as follows. Abigail worked in

the Proctor household and then she had an affair with John the master of the house

then Elizabeth threw Abigail out of the house because she knew about the affair with

Abigail and her husband. Abigail then drinks the chicken blood to send her spirit out

to kill Goody Proctor. After the events of the previous night the daughter of Reverend

Paris, Betty was taken ill and she was not able to wake. Later when she woke she said

this,

“I want my mama!”

Abigail says “What ails you Betty? your mama’s dead and buried.”

Betty replies “I’ll fly to Mama. Let me fly

Abigail then says “I told him everything; he knows now, he knows everything we-”

Betty then says “You drank blood, Abby!You didn’t tell him that!”

This is also telling us that the rumour of Abigail drinking blood has been backed up

by the fact that the people who were there especially Abigail have been accused and

she agrees, in a way with them. Then the a man who is very respected and is from

Boston comes and says

” If the devil is in Salem we shall find him”

Abigail is then arrested on charges of witchcraft. Instead of being executed for the

crime she is asked to tell everyone who it was who was with the devil. She accuses

lots of people and these are all arrested and taken in for questing. Then it is suggested

that Abigail has told the people that goody Proctor was worshipping with the devil.

This is so that she can have John Proctor all to herself. This unfortunately does not

work because the reason why she thought that goody proctor should be accused is

because Abigail was found with a needle in her chest and this meant that she could

not breathe properly. This was just a complete stunt by Abigail so that she could

accuse goody proctor. Elizabeth had, had a popped made in the court by Mary Warren

and this was in the court Mary gave the popped to Elizabeth with the needle still in the

popped. Elizabeth was taken in to quoting and this made John very angry. John had

the idea to go with Mary to the court and clear Elizabeth’s name. At this stage in the

play Proctor is like a raging animal. Abigail is also very important because her

accusation then caused other good citizens to be arrested. Some of these people were

like Rebecca Nurse. In the film but not in the book, John and Abigail meet in the

woods for a discussion on the subject, this is also where Abigail tries to get beck into

Johns good books. The trials start to happen and Elizabeth is bought in front of the

court where she wants to tell them that the her husband did not have an affair with

anyone but John had already told the court that he did not. The court then starts to

believe Abigail and people also start to. Abigail then becomes essential to the play

telling the court everything. At this stage she also starts to lie about. All the people

around her, also start to lie and everyone soon realises that she is lying and she then

begins to lie. All the girls around Abigail can not tell her that she is lying because

they will also be accused. The importance of Abigail in the play as I think I have

already explained is very important and without her it is obvious the play would not

exist because she tells the lies about everyone.

Bibliography

Wrekin College