Honors English 3
September 14th, 2012
Character Arc Essay
“Power changes everything ‘till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who are the villains,” said Libba Bray. A perfect example to support this quote is how the accusations of witchcraft changed an entire village in the story “The Crucible.” Abigail Williams, a main character, was an orphaned teenage girl living with her uncle and her cousin, Betty, in the city of Salem. She was overlooked and unimportant until she was caught dancing in the woods with her friends one night. All of sudden two of the girls became ill and their only explanation was witchcraft. Abigail said she was innocent and blamed her own slave of possessing her. Abigail realized how powerful her words were and began to accuse anyone who had ever crossed her of being a witch. What people didn’t know was that it was all a lie. Throughout the story Abigail’s need for more power and attention increased until she was no longer the silly girl that danced in the woods, but a conniving and jealous antagonist.
All of the chaos that Abigail caused started with one thing: Abigail wanted revenge on Elizabeth Procter. Abigail was Elizabeth’s serving girl until she was fired because she was sleeping with Elizabeth’s husband, John. Abigail was still in love with John and sought out to get rid of his wife so she could then take her place. She first drank chicken blood while she was in the woods to try to kill Elizabeth. However, it didn’t work and once the town found out about this, she said Tituba made her do it. Tituba was arrested along with the other “witches” that Abigail and Betty listed in their confession. Abigail saw how easy it was to condemn those innocent women and thought she could do the same to Elizabeth. Mary Warren, John and Elizabeth’s servant, had made a doll one day in court for Elizabeth. Abigail saw this doll and took note of the needle that Mary placed in the doll’s stomach for safe keeping. Soon after the