How Effective Is the End of Act III as an Ending to This Act and as a Preparation for the Rest of the Play?

The play ‘The Crucible’ was written by Arthur Miller in 1953, but set in 1629’s Salem. It was written as “an act of desperation” by Miller during the McCarthy period, where Americans were accusing fellow Americans of having pro communist beliefs. Miller and his friends were later accused and Miller was found guilty. The Salem trials and McCarthyism were both based on witch hunts (the Salem trials both figuratively and literally speaking), people were blaming each other of crimes, mostly for the sake of saving themselves, and in both situations, mainly because of propaganda, everything spiraled out of control. Miller used the play ‘The Crucible’ to express his views on McCarthyism in an allegorical like way.

The crucible starts when, after dancing in the woods of Salem, two children take sick, one being the minister of Salem’s, Rev. Parris’s daughter. Being a theocracy, speculation in the village arouses about the causes of the children’s illness after the towns doctor could not discover a medicine for it. Because of this another minister, Rev. Hale, who has good knowledge of witchcraft, was called out to ascertain it. Tituba, Reverend Parris’s slave confessed to witchcraft, and so do the rest of the girls who were dancing in the forest, but both say that they saw other citizens of Salem with the devil, to take the blame of themselves. This starts the trials. The girls, led

by Abigail Williams, the niece of Parris conjure many tricks to incriminate their innocent victims. Towards the end of act III, Mary Warren, one of the girls who had been dancing in the forest, shows courage and decides to tell the truth to judges Danforth and Hanthorne. Courage is also a theme in The Crucible, as courage is shown by the people who are accused of crimes they have not committed and are prepared to die for truth. This causes Abigail and the girls to start another ridiculous trick, which goes horribly wrong for Abigail. I will be writing about how effective the end of Act III is as an ending to the act and as a preparation for the rest of the play.

Abigail realizes that not everyone is being fooled by her deceitfulness after Hale exclaims “This girl has always struck me false” while pointing at her. Abigail is also angry about her fornicatious adultery with Proctor being in the open, because to some people it would question her judgment about who was league with the devil, especially after having Proctors wife incarcerated. So she decides to implicate Mary Warren of being in league with Satan, to save her own name, and hopefully make people forget about what happened with Proctor. Abigail then screams up to the rafters. This in itself is a dramatic technique, as before this the audience/ reader think that the truth will be released after all of the previous tension, and that the hanging on innocent people will stop, but Abigail comes up with another murderous plan. The screaming is also dramatic as it makes the audience wonder what Abigail has plotted next.

Abigail later ends the wondering of the people in the courthouse by saying “Why do you come, yellow bird”. The yellow bird was supposed to be a sign of some one being in league with