Similarities Between The Crucible And Atonement

“Literature often reflects man’s destruction with little room left for his redemption”. Compare and contrast Atonement and The Crucible in the light of this comment

Despite the two hundred and fifty year difference between the settings, destruction in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Ian McEwan’s Atonement is similar in its manmade causes, with antagonists Abigail Williams and Briony Tallis devastating the lives of the people in their respective societies. The carnage described in McEwan’s novel and Miller’s play has other sources, such as war and hysteria. Considering the title of McEwan’s novel, it is unsurprising that a central character, Briony, attempts to atone for her detrimental actions, but it is perhaps remarkable that an individual
in the crumbling society of The Crucible’s Salem, which had become very much egocentric, should strive to absolve themselves, but John Proctor proves to be this individual.

Both writers create a central female character who becomes the root of destruction in their respective societies. Although they have this damning similarity, Atonement’s Briony Tallis, an over-imaginative girl of thirteen years, and The Crucible’s Abigail Williams, a malicious and manipulative seventeen-year-old, have very different approaches to their roles as antagonists. In Part One of Atonement, the reader is lead to believe that it is Briony’s overactive imagination that causes her to identify Robbie Turner as the rapist of her cousin Lola. Constantly, Briony’s tendency to merge reality with her imagination is shown to be an issue. Her incessant story-writing is one outlet for her fertile imagination, but every aspect of Briony’s life is extrapolated into a possible plot for another adventure. Considering her mother’s age, Briony sees herself ‘standing alone in a great arena’ watched by ‘the whole cast of her life, assembled to love her in her loss’ at her mother’s conceptual funeral. Her desperation to take centre stage is also demonstrated in this abstract insight into this over-productive imagination of Briony’s. As the text progresses, the reader sees Robbie transfiguring into, in Briony’s mind, a ‘maniac’ who could ‘attack anyone’. With the incidents by the fountain and in the library, as critic Rachel Gray identifies, ‘she casually fills in the missing details with her imagination, marking fiction as the truth.’1 As a result, Briony sees Robbie as more than capable of committing the crime against her cousin. Thriving on the attention that comes with being the sole witness, Briony is determined that Robbie is the culprit, and as a result, her accusations of Robbie subsequently send his life, and that of Cecilia, his lover and her sister, into turmoil, into prison and then into the war that would eventually be revealed to have killed him.
Abigail Williams’ deliberate destruction of the lives of fellow residents in 17th century Salem is unlike Briony’s subversive sabotaging of Robbie’s.
Abigail sets out with malicious intent to ruin the respectability of those who she feels are obstructing her. Once she realises that she has the power to send people to jail if not the gallows, Abigail sets out to claim John Proctor by accusing his wife Elizabeth of witchcraft. Her affair with Proctor has set in Abigail’s mind a belief that he is in love with her, despite the fact that he had ‘hardly stepped off [his] farm this seven-month.’ Abigail’s confidence that Proctor would take her back leads her to accuse Elizabeth of witchcraft, despite her impeccable reputation. Rebecca Nurse, a likewise well respected woman whose ‘great charities’ are well-known across the colony, is also accused, disregarding the widely held opinion expressed by Proctor’s doubt that ‘so pious a woman be secretly a Devil’s bitch after seventy year of such good prayer.’ Abigail’s ability to manipulate and influence enable her to adopt a position of power within Salem. Critic Wade Bradford observes Abigail’s ability to manipulate other characters’ perception of her as an orphaned teenage girl, commenting that ‘although [Judge Danforth] interrogates the others, he often seems too embarrassed to accuse the beautiful Miss Williams of any lascivious activity’2. Though Abigail and the girls, as unmarried and youthful females, would generally be considered as being at the lowest rung of this society, they have become elevated to positions of power, from which they can accuse even the most respected of citizens and have their accusation taken seriously. The inversion of Salem’s social structure is just one example of a society that has imploded; the residents who have yet to be arrested or executed regard one another which heavy suspicion, ready to accuse to settle old grudges and to profit from a neighbour’s imprisonment, destroying the community
in the process.

Destructive accusations are used by both Briony and Abigail, but the wild denunciation from a naïve thirteen-year-old contrast with the cold, manipulative and purposeful indictments of a promiscuous young woman who uses them to further her own intentions. While it is evident that Abigail accuses many in her quest to have Elizabeth executed so that she maybe with John Proctor, the reason for Briony’s accusations for Robbie are unclear, until it is revealed in Part Two that she confessed her love for Robbie. Robbie dismisses this as ‘a schoolgirl crush’, but her motivations of accusing him now have some clarity as she sees him becoming intimate with her sister. Despite her young age, Briony displays what Gray considers ‘a strange combination of childishness with maturity’3. While Briony is content with accusing the one man she considers to have been unfaithful, Abigail will deconstruct the entire town in her pursuit of the man she lusts after. The lies of Abigail are calculated, whereas Briony does not consciously lie, but both result in equal destruction.

Abigail and the other girls are able to ascend to their powerful positions in Salem with the help of hysteria. The notion that witchcraft is in their midst proves catastrophic for the theocratic society built on Puritan ideals. It is a fragile community that easily collapses under the pressures of the cardinal sins. While not actually causing the damage to Salem, hysteria accelerates the destruction of the town, preventing the residents from rationally considering the evidence. By surpassing the logical explanations, the town’s inhabitants are subject to the ‘hysterical climate’ that is recognised by Monica Tudora, which ‘enables people to believe that their neighbours, whom they have always considered upstanding people, are committing absurd and unbelievable crimes’4. The hysteria allows people to be charged as witches, even if, like Rebecca Nurse, they are considered ‘the very brick and mortar of the church’, because the panicked state Salem finds itself in causes all accusations to be taken seriously and all evidence, however absurd, is treated with the utmost sincerity. The cardinal sins are the actual source of the community’s devastation - ironic in a theocracy. The Putnams’ greed for land, Abigail’s lust for Proctor and her envy of Elizabeth, Danforth’s pride that prevents him from postponing the executions, as ‘postponement speaks a floundering on [his] part’, are just a narrow selection of the capital vices that are the reason for the arrests of many and executions of the nineteen dead. While central to The Crucible’s plot, hysteria is not absent from Atonement. Emily Tallis ‘had pursued [Robbie’s] prosecution with a strange ferocity’, and Jack, who had ‘subsidised Robbie’s education all his life’, ‘vanished into the ministry the moment he was needed.’ In the panic of the Tallis household, the situation and evidence is not scrutinised closely, leading the characters to reach inaccurate conclusions that allow them to adopt their positions as chief prosecutor, in Emily’s case, or slip into absence, as Jack and Leon do. Though they are familiar with Briony’s overactive imagination, hysteria prevents them from recognising that fantasy has clouded her perception. Hysteria accelerates the destruction of both Salem’s community and the Tallis family as it prevents clear, rational judgement
Destruction in Salem is perhaps best illustrated by the prison or gallows, but in Atonement, the devastation of Robbie’s life is reflected by the carnage of the war he is forced into as a criminal. This is experienced by Robbie in the retreat to Dunkirk in Part Two, while Briony herself encounters war’s destructive impact while training as a nurse. ‘The retreat unfolds’ in the eyes of Geoff Dyer ‘in a series of vividly realised details and encounters’5, with the child’s ‘leg in the tree’, the shooting of the cavalry’s horses and the vaporised mother and child all expressed in intricate detail that is so defined that the reader is more revolted than if the scene had been depicted without the detail. In Briony’s hospital, Private Latimer, whose face has been so badly damaged that it only faintly resembled ‘the cut-away model they used in anatomy classes’; Corporal MacIntyre, who had burning oil ‘seared through the tissue’ across his body; and Luc Cornet, who died in Briony’s arms with his ‘spongy crimson mess of brain’ exposed, are just a select few of the hundreds of wounded soldiers who flow into the hospital. The reader anticipates a certain degree of bloodshed, but the minutia that the descriptions go into reveals ‘unexpected detail’, which invokes the full horror of war. Violence is sporadically referred to in The Crucible, but Abigail is always involved in the aggression that features infrequently. It is she who ‘smashes [Betty] across the face’ and the reason she is an orphan is because ‘[her] dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to [hers]’. The association of Abigail and brutality shows the malicious and destructive character to the audience. Violence has an exceptionally destructive influence, and this is reflected within both the novel and play.

Redemption is not achieved in either of the texts, but there are attempts by certain characters to atone for their prior actions. Atonement is the story of Briony’s attempt to atone for naming Robbie as the rapist of Lola, effectively ending his life as he is sent to prison and then to war. In the epilogue, the reader discovers that Robbie and Cecilia’s reunion was fabricated by Briony as the novelist, since ‘Robbie Turner died of septicaemia at Bray Dunes’ and ‘Cecilia was killed...by the bomb that destroyed Balham Underground station.’ With the death of the two people whose lives she destroyed, Briony cannot atone. As Dyer expresses, ‘her atonement relies on Robbie’s survival’6. His passing away does not allow Briony to repair the damage she has done to his life, as her character attempts in her novel. Since Briony cannot redeem herself through reparations to Robbie, atonement is sought first through her hospital work, though Daniel Mendelsohn observes that ‘her real atonement won’t take the form of anything as mundane, or as easy, as hard physical labour in the service of the less fortunate’7, and then through her writing of the novel. Evidently Briony has been unable to shed her childhood fusion of reality and fiction, and rewrites the novel numerous times to give Robbie and Cecilia the happy ending they never had, and thus atone for her guilt. In The Crucible, John Proctor has an early opportunity to denounce Abigail and her accusations, but in an attempt to preserve his good name, he remains silent about their ‘lechery’. It is not until late in Act Three that Proctor condemns Abigail for a ‘whore’, but by then it is too late. Crying ‘I have given you my soul; leave me my name!’, his desire to retain his reputation causes him not to sign the false confession and prefer death over dishonour. He endeavours to redeem himself for failing to prevent the eighteen other murders in deciding that his execution is his final act of atonement. Redemption is left too late by both Briony and Proctor; death has taken Briony’s opportunity for forgiveness, while Proctor cannot save the eighteen who die with him.

Briony Tallis and Abigail Williams play destructive roles in their respective texts; a young, imaginative female is evidently a dangerous threat in a fragile environment. External influences, such as the war and violent childhood of Abigail, also contribute significantly to the collapse of a community, as does hysteria as an internal force that causes the society’s members to forgo rational judgement and reach illogical conclusions. While destruction does dominate Atonement and The Crucible, redemption is not neglected in either text, with at least one character in each attempting to atone for past misdeeds. However, while Briony and Proctor spend a great deal of the texts trying to correct their wrongdoings, neither fulfils their atonement. Under different circumstances, there may have been the opportunity to make amends, but they have left little room for their redemption.

Bibliography
Bradford, Wade. The Crucible: Abigail and Manipulation. California State University, Northridge (CSUN). 2
Dyer, Geoff. Who’s afraid of influence?. The Guardian. September 2001. 5 6
Gray, Rachel. Reading Ian McEwan’s Atonement: A Closer Look at Briony. Associated Content. September 2006. 1 3
Mendelsohn, Daniel. Unforgiven. New York Magazine. March 2002. 7
Tudora, Monica. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible: Hysteria and Witchcraft. University of Craiova, Romania. 4