CRUCIBLE: 31-49

“The daughters of the towns would assemble at night and, sometimes with fetishes, sometimes with a selected young man, give themselves to love, with some bastardly results. The Church …condemned these orgies as witchcraft and interpreted them, rightly, as a resurgence of the Dionysiac forces it had crushed long before” (35).

These qualities listed sound very familiar and ultimately allude to the very bizarre Abigail. While we don’t have specific details on the previous affair between Abigail and Proctor, we have an idea based on Abigail’s behavior. She throws herself at John, seduces him, and makes him pity her. She has ‘given herself to love’, it is apparent that she in infatuated with him. Abigail’s manners are best described as pertaining to witchcraft, according to the Church. The idea of Abigail practicing witchcraft seemed pretty obvious as she drank blood to harm Proctor’s wife. In simpler terms, she is CRAZY! The Church’s ability to detect witchcraft within a woman demonstrates their accuracy. Maybe a society based on religion isn’t so bad.

HALE, with rising exaltation: You are God’s instrument put in our hands to discover the Devil’s agents among us. You are selected, Tituba, you are chosen to help us cleanse our village (46).

The claim that if anything were to go wrong, Tituba would be to blame proved to be true. Once again, Abigail utilizes her manipulative talents to point the finger at Tituba. Immediately, Reverend Parris is angered by the thought of Tituba enlisting the Devil within his daughter and he suggests that she be whipped. He immediately jumps to conclusion and this is one of his fallacies. This is also not the first time he has fallen for Abigail’s deception. She even admits that she was ordered to kill Parris but she refused. Reverend Hale was able to see the benevolence within Tituba, contrary to Parris’ irrationality which demonstrates his adequacy.