The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Reading Journal
First entry, Act One.
The first scene of The Crucible can be seen as an opening scene, as it presents some of the characters of the book and the story. In fact, we see the presentation of the characters and it is shown to us how all the story started. However, the one that shocks me the most is Abigail Williams. Indeed, at the beginning of the book, we see that she appears as a delicate and sweet girl, a girl that couldn’t do any bad. However, we see as the story goes in this first act that she is not what she pretended to be. We indeed discover that she was the mistress of Proctor and that she destroyed one of the most holy things in the world: marriage. This scene with Proctor seems for me like a foreshadowing as we really start to see who Abigail Williams really is. Who will she become? That’s for us to discover.

Second entry, Act One.
This entry will be talking about Abigail Williams but also about the theme of fear. First, let’s talk about Abigail Williams. In this scene, the revelation of Abigail’s real personality really strikes us. The fact that she is ready to drink blood and to injure spirits in the forest all that in order to kill a women she considers her rival really shows us who Abigail really is: a conceited girl who is ready to ruin everybody’s life in order to obtain what she wants.
We also see in this scene the theme of fear and how it affects the people in the book. In fact, in this first act, we see how Abigail is trying to install fear in the girl’s mind. Indeed, when they are discovered and that they try to tell the truth, Abigail shouts at them words that are meant to make them fear her. Right in the scene, she says: “Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word about the othe...

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...children?”
Hathorne is asking those kind of questions because he know that people cannot answer them without accusing themselves. He is, by asking the questions before, implying that what he is saying is the truth. Therefore, the fact he asks loaded questions gives him the opportunity to say that what he is saying is the truth.

First entry, Act Four.
In this entry, I would like to talk about the fact that John Proctor is in a way forced to confess to witchcraft. This leads us to talk about the senseless rule of the court: if you confess to witchcraft your go to jail and if you do not confess you are killed. Therefore, when Proctor learns that his wife is pregnant, he is in a sort forced to confess in order to remain alive and assist to the birth of his child. However, after confessing, he is forced by the jury to sign it, but he refuses and is therefore killed.