Evil In The Crucible

Knowingly committing evil is when a person purposely causes a harmful sin or deed. Throughout The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, many characters display malicious acts towards each other and also towards their community. Evil is portrayed by characters like Abigail Williams, Thomas Putnam, and the girls of Salem.

First of all, Abigail Williams is one of the main characters in the play who knowingly perpetrate heinous actions. The first abhorrent action that Abigail commits is when she has an affair with John Proctor. Her love and desire for John motivates her to carry out the affair, in spite of the fact that she knows that her decision is false and misguided. Abigail and John's affair, causes Elizabeth Proctor (John's wife), to loose her trust and faith in him. John shows the unsuitability and distrust in their marriage when he argues, “you will not judge me more, Elizabeth. I have good reason to think before I charge fraud on Abigail, and I will think on it. Let you look to your own improvement before you go to judge your husband any more. I have forgot Abigail, and-” (54). John is very distressed by the fact that Elizabeth does not have any trust in him, and he starts to regret his affair with Abigail more and more each day. Furthermore, this shows that Abigail's motive to separate John from his wife is significantly prospering. Moreover, Abigail Williams also deliberately perpetrates evil, when she takes the girl to the forest to dance, and to create a charm to kill Goody Proctor. When Betty Parris wakes, she reminds Abigail of her true intentions for taking the girls to the forest to dance. This alarms

Abigail that all the girls, including Betty could turn against her and confess the truth, which causes her to threaten them...

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...ws that the appropriate thing to do is to confess what she truly knows, but her suspicion and worry of getting killed by Abigail persuades her to do the unsound thing. Finally, many of the girls purposely chose not to declare the truth, due to the fact that they enjoyed having power over Salem, by having the permission to speak and accuse people.

In conclusion, Abigail Williams, Thomas Putnam, and the girls of Salem deliberately perpetrate heinous actions throughout the play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Many of the citizens in Salem, recognized the truth behind the witch-hunt, but they chose to keep it to themselves in order to prevent being involved. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”