Shifting the Blame to Survive
Mateo Sosnik
Have you ever had trust in someone just to find out they were doing everything with a bad intention? That is the same thing that happened to a lot of people in The Crucible. The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller and released in 1953. It has won many awards including a Tony Award for the best play and a Pulitzer Prize for the best drama. In The Crucible, Abigail Williams and other young women in Salem claim to see the devil and participate in witchcraft because there are a lot of things Tituba does that make it seem like she is behind something.
Tituba is conjuring spirits without anyone knowing except for Abigail because they trust each other. When Hale starts questioning Abigail about what had happened and starts threatening her, she is forced to tell everyone what Tituba had told her to not be the suspect. “Parris: Then you were conjuring spirits last night. Abigail: Not I, sir - Tituba and Ruth.” (p. 15)Tituba was conjuring spirits behind everyone’s back and trusted that Abigail wouldn’t tell anyone. Little did she know, Abigail wasn’t afraid to tell everyone about what Tituba did. that
Tituba makes Abigail drink something that Abigail thought is her own baby’s blood but ends up being chicken blood. Everyone is asking Tituba what she made Abigail drink, and when Abigail asks Tituba if it was her baby’s blood, Tituba immediately responds with "no, no, chicken blood. I give the chicken blood!” (p. 41) Tituba made Abigail drink chicken blood to make her feel bad because since people knew that Tituba and Abigail were friends, they would never suspect Tituba to do something bad to her friend, but everything went wrong with Tituba’s plan. Nothing happened to Abigail when she drank the chicken blood, and everyone found out she was the one that gave it to Abigail.
Tituba is falsely accused of leading the girls in Salem in witchcraft but then goes on to immediately accuse someone else, saying that she saw someone leading the girls. Right after Tituba gets falsely accused of leading the girls of the play in witchcraft, she immediately responds, “Mister Reverend, I do believe somebody else is witchin’ the children” (Page 42). Since Tituba immediately says that she sees someone leading the children after she gets falsely accused of doing it, it seems that Tituba is trying to switch the subject away from her. She knows something that we don’t, or she might have done something no one knew about.
In conclusion, Even though no one was guilty of witchcraft, Tituba would be the most likely to be behind it because of her actions. The reader can take away that The Crucible has a very insteresing plot, and that it is worth reading.
