Revenge in “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller

Revenge In Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, revenge plays a significant role in making the Putnam believe Rebecca Nurse is guilty of witchcraft, and of making other people accuse each other of witchcraft. In this story revenge was huge in more than one part of the story revenge took place. In the following paragraphs, I will be talking about three situations where revenge was used. The first out of the three examples I will be explaining about revenge was when Abigail Williams was jealous of Proctor's wife Elizabeth. Revenge was also shown by Ann Putnam and Rebecca Nurse. The last example I will be sharing is how Thomas Putnam uses revenge against everyone in Salem in a very odd way. Abigail Williams is jealous of Proctor's wife Elizabeth so Abigail Williams starts to do things to get Elizabeth away from Proctor. She started to accuse her of witchcraft by stating that Elizabeth sent her a spirit to stab her with a needle.

Abigail Williams came to the point where she wants Proctor's wife Elizabeth dead so she can have John Proctor to herself. Her revenge continues in the way of her telling John lies about Elizabeth to make Elizabeth seem like a lair and Abigail like a good person. After the affair, John didn't want anything to do with Abigail no more while Abigail was still dangerously in love with him. Abigail, I will cut my hand off before it can ever reach you again (page.24). Abigail started to understand that while Elizabeth is alive she will never have a chance with Proctor again. Abigail mentioned Elizabeth's name at the court which ends up sending her to jail taking her out of the picture like she wanted and ends up killing John Proctor with her filthy lies.Secondly, revenge was highly shown by Ann Putnam and Rebecca Nurse. Her thinking goody nurse was a witch made her kill her children purposely. Goody nurse The Lord knows I have not hurt them. I am an innocent person. There is a murderous witch among us (page.17)

For murder, she was charged! So she was charged with murdering the marvelous babies. Ann Putnam was extremely afraid because she didn't want anything bad to happen to her last child that she had so this made her take caution. Thirdly, Thomas Putnam accused people through his daughter Ruth of witchcraft the people they accused were all from Salem. If Jacobs hangs for a witch he forfeits up his property that's law! And there is none but Putnam with the coin to by so great a piece.(page.97) What Thomas Putnam did was once the person was accused then once they were either hung to death or just sentenced to jail he would just simply buy all their land off. Like I said before he accused everyone or the people he tried to accuse they were from Salem so his revenge was towards the people in Salem. This continued for a very long time so Putnam felt very powerful himself so he got very happy every time he got to accuse someone because he knew he would get to buy the land after.

In conclusion, this story contained a lot of revenge within it, all the revenge was very unfair towards the people it was used against. I explained three examples of how revenge was used in the story The Crucible. These examples that were explained where the top three situations where I thought revenge was highly unfair especially in the case of Elizabeth and Proctor I extremely don't like how unfair Abigail was with them she was just very jealous which made her take the wrong decisions. None of these examples of revenge were acceptable they were all wrong to do. Revenge in my opinion revenge should never be used against someone because revenge can take you to do stuff you'll end up regretting in life.

Cite this page