The way these issues are presented in the play Essay Example for Free

The way these issues are presented in the play Essay Things take a turn for the worse when the reverend starts to question Abigail about her relationship with John Proctor. Now Abigail can see that things can turn against her and she answers her uncle by saying Goody Proctor had wanted to use her as a slave and uses the sentence I will not black my face for any of them. Abigail also lets it be known to her uncle that Goody Proctor is a bitter woman who only wants to spread gossip, she assures her uncle that her name is white in the village. Abigail is trying very hard to get out of a very delicate situation, she can see that by giving the whole truth she will be at the very least cast out of the village and at the very worst named as a witch, but she should have realised that her uncle would never have allowed her to be named as a witch as this would have destroyed his good name. There is a meeting convened in the church where Reverend Parriss informs the people of Salem that their may be an evil spirit lurking in the village and that he has called in a man by the name of Mr Hale to come and see if there are any witches in the village and he reminds them of the trial of a witch in Beverly which came to nothing as Mr Hale had found the woman not to be a practicing witch. At this point Abigail runs from the church along with the other girls who had been in the woods with her. All the girls involved in the magical rites become hysterical and try to wake one of the girls in this case it is Betty Parriss. Betty awakes and blames Abigail saying she is a blood drinker who drank the blood of a chicken to kill Goody Proctor. This is not what Abigail wants to hear she knows the implications and she threatens Betty with terrible events if she tells about the blood drinking. We now see Proctor with many of the leaders of the village, downstairs in the Reverends house, discussing the children who are in a trance like state and also discussing the bringing in of a witch hunter. One of these people is Rebecca Nurse who is an elder of the village and she like John Proctor always speaks sense and knows that the children are acting up because they have been caught doing something wrong in the woods. I understand from all this that those people who have nothing to fear in their lives are just speaking the truth but people like Parriss are looking for a way out of their own problems and so are actually making the problem grow. Abigail meets up with John Proctor in the village and you can tell that John knows that it is Abigail who has caused the problems in the village but that he finds her very childlike and at this point does not know how dangerous Abigail is. In fact Abigail admits to John at this point that they were only messing about in the woods and that what they were doing was nothing more than a childish prank and not real witchcraft. Abigail on the other hand wants the love of John Proctor but John refuses Abigail and he tells her that they will not carry on their affair he says to her I will cut of my hand before reaching for you again. Abigail reacts in a very jealous way as she is burning with jealousy and says terrible things to John about his wife Goody Proctor. John is calm and tells her not to speak badly of his wife. If we are being fair to Abigail at this point we should understand that she was deeply in love with John Proctor, she did not think of their liaison as an quick affair but one of deep love and she could not understand why she was now being shunned by the man she loved so much. The witch hunter Hale arrives in Salem he has come from Beverly and when he meets with John Proctor the two men acknowledge that they are both intelligent men who want to get to the bottom of an increasingly disastarous problem.