Don't Lie
Pearl Desire Cortez Estrada
Have you ever noticed that one lie can escalate to something bigger? In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, there is a group of girls who falsely accuse the innocent townspeople of Salem of witchcraft. With these accusations, trials are beginning and innocent people of Salem are brought into court. With no way of defending themselves, the punishment for those claims leads into two hundred arrests and 19 deaths of the people in Salem. The young girls in Salem who accused the townspeople, had claimed to have conjured or interacted with the devil, and they don’t want to admit that they had lied in the first place.
One of the girls, Abigail, doesn’t care about others and their feelings. Abigail says, “And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ head on the pillow next to mine, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down! She goes to Betty and roughly sits her up. Now you– sit up and stop this!” (p.19). Mary Warren says, “What's gotten into her? Abby, She's going to die! It’s a sin to conjure and we-” (p.19). Abigail says, “I say shut it Mary warren!” (p.19). Mary Warren had tried to tell Abigail that conjuring spirits is wrong. Abigail doesn’t care what Mary Warren thinks, because she knows that Mary is scared of her. Mary is afraid of telling the truth about Abigail because she thinks that Abigail will accuse her of witchcraft, then she will end up in jail awaiting a trial and Abigail could kill Mary’s parents. So Mary had kept her mouth shut.
A threat could be really serious and it doesn’t seem like Abigail understands that she could be punished. Probably because she thinks good girl and wants people to look at her like she is perfect. On page 40 Hale says, “Why are you concealing? Have you sold yourself to lucifer?”. Abigail says, “I never sold myself! I am a good girl! I am a proper girl!” (p.40). Notice how she says that she is a “good girl! A proper girl”. Let’s go back towards the very beginning of the book when she threatened Betty and Tituba. That threat had made Abigail lose trust of both Betty and Tituba, and the threat was brutal. Abigail is a fake, she is mean, and acts like she's the boss of her friend group and doesn’t seem to care that much about her friends based on how she treats them.
Later on in the book, Abigail creates a scheme to get attention from John Proctor, but Betty and Tituba had been telling her that it was wrong. Abigail just kept going and later on had threatened Betty and Tituba. Abigail says, “Now look you. All of you. We danced. And tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sisters. And that is all” (p.19). With this scheme it makes Abby's hands look clean during this crime of conjuring. With the scheme she made, she blames others for it so that it looks like she had no part of what happened. Abigail always wants attention. She’ll cry about it and maybe even yell just to get the attention she wants. Abigail in tears says, “I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretense Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes? I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet! He turns abruptly to go out. She rushes to him. John, pity me, pity me.” (p.19). John had been ignoring her and tried to leave and that had made Abigail annoyed.
To sum things up, people in Salem have passed away due to those incorrect accusations made by the girls . The families of those people could still be in mourning, and Abigail doesn’t seem to care. She is a manipulator, she is intimidating, doesn’t care for others, and overall just plain scary. Mary Warren, who wasn’t very good friends with Abigail, had even told her that it is a sin to conjure and once again, Abigail didn’t care. Now if you recall, during the time of the crime of conjuring the devil, when Abigail made the scheme, She wanted to have John Proctor to herself, by removing Elizabeth Proctor. She tries to kill Elizabeth by sending spirits to kill her. Her scheme was working but soon after she was caught and was punished for her crimes against the town Salem. Her hands remained clean for some time, but unfortunately, she was hanged for her part in witchcraft.
