Reverend Parris is known throughout the whole story to cause hysteria with the witch trials. He took Abigail's side in claiming a large majority of the townspeople are witches. He had the motive of keeping his materialistic personality under the radar, by doing that he is saving the little reputation he has and more importantly keeping him the job in which he acquires all of his money. Thomas Putnam had a bigger motive for starting these witch trials. Thomas Putnam helped spread the witch trials because he was bitter towards the Nurses and he wanted more land for himself.…
him, and Parris is very concerned with building his position in the community yet he complains…
Parris’ motivation for inadvertently causing the hysteria is his fear of losing his position as reverend. Miller shows Parris’ concern for his job over the well-being of his daughter when he says, “But if you trafficked with spirits in the forest I must know it now, for surely my enemies will, and they will ruin me with it” (10). When both his daughter and his reputation are on the line, Reverend Parris uses a poor choice of words to convey his distraught over the situation. When he interrogates his niece, Abigail, Parris reveals his priorities in the scandal. Instead of trying to ask whether there were spirits in the house so he can get rid of them to save his daughter, Parris talks about “[his] enemies” and how this will ruin his career.…
In Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible, it’s very obvious there’s tension and resentment. Talks of evil and talks of unfairness surround the book. Although some characters are at fault for the evil, some try to help, even if they don’t seem to at first. One example of a character like this is Reverend Hale. He starts out as a character you probably won’t like, but as the play continues, you slowly become more accustomed to his way of thinking and what he wants overall.…
Millers Presentation of Parris is interesting; he uses Parris as a symbol for the theme of power and conflict within the parameters of religion. As an audience, we can see that Miller makes an example of Parris: he is used to demonstrate some of the major flaws of society across the ages.…
Parris is dogmatic, intolerant of opposition, and overly suspicious of those that he does not like. His desire to persecute his rivals sets the hysteria in Salem into motion. Parris only does things to further his purposes and he only thinks of the effects that any given circumstance will have on him. When his daughter Betty is unresponsive in the beginning of the play, Parris is more concerned about what the neighbors will think if it turns out that Betty was practicing witchcraft than he is with her condition. He fears that if it appears that he cannot control his household, the townspeople will not trust him with the entire village. As soon as the court comes into power Parris begins to set the court against his assumed enemies, including John Proctor, Francis Nurse, and Giles Corey. When Francis Nurse presented a signed petition in favor of his wife to the court, it was Parris's idea to arrest those who signed the petition. Parris supports the court when it remains in power and can aid him, but as soon as the town began to turn against it, Parris is the first to look for a way out.…
Readers can interpret The Crucible in many different ways. One of the major foils is Reverend Parris to John Proctor. Parris is a highly respected man in the society and keeps a pure white name within the government system. However, because of his position Parris has become very selfish and cares about his reputation in the community more than anything else. For example, even though Parris questions Abigail about what she was doing in the forest, he does not want to go and deny that there is no witchcraft being taken place because he fears it will hurt his reputation.…
“Something was terribly wrong with the reverend’s nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and his orphaned eleven-year-old niece, Abigail Williams” (Schanzer 18). In fact Betty was “the first afflicted girl and one of the chief accusers during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692” (Brooks). The pious puritans believed that God did everything for an absolute reason, therefore when natural disasters began to occur; they believed it was because they had done something wrong (they called this “God’s wrath”). “And God’s wrath was exactly what was troubling Reverend Samuel Parris, the Puritan minister of little Slam Village” (Schanzer 17). Here’s the problem, the witch trials began when Samuel Parris took the girls to the doctor and he “declared the girls were most certainly under an Evil Hand” (Schanzer 22). Keep in mind that the girls got bewitched right when Samuel Parris stopped receiving income due to the lowering of taxes. This concerns me. A couple days after the girls went to the doctor, Parris asked the girls who was possessing them. The girls responded with the names of three women. And Parris certainly believed them, unheeding the fact that they were…
Reverend Parris is a self serving person who only thinks of himself and his own reputation. He is a static character because his behaviour doesn’t change throughout the play, The Crucible. At the beginning of the play, he is concerned with the way his niece and her friend’s actions reflect on him and his reputation. Toward the end of the play, he is concerned about how he and his reputation will look if people find out some of the most respected people of the church died because of his niece, Abigail Williams. Abigail Williams is a manipulative child who spins a web of lies and is almost static similarly to Parris. The apple does not fall far from the tree. Throughout the duration of the play, his motives for his actions remain constant.…
In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, Reverend Hale evolves from a pompous man to a more cynical mad being. He enters Salem with extreme confidence in his belief that witches are present in Salem. As the trials go on, Reverend HAle begins to notice just how ridiculous and false the girl’s accusations were. In a short period of time, Reverend Hale loses faith in witchcraft and evolves into a more cynical man.…
4, ¶ 1) would care all that much about his child’s health, so it is easy to suspect that he has some covert reason to be acting as though he cared about his child. This suspicion is confirmed when he states to Abigail, rather than saying trafficking with spirits is dangerous to their spiritual health, that “if you trafficked with spirits in the forest I must know it now, for surely my enemies will, and they will ruin me with it, (p. 10, ¶ 8). In this offhand statement, he reveals his intents to be solely self-preservative, as was the United states government. When Parris reappears later in the court scene, his outlook on witchcraft appears to have changed, as before he attempted to deny it to his neighbors, but once it escalated to such a level, he took the side that most benefited him and attempted to condemn the accused witches, presumably to get the ordeal over with. Parris could have been intended by Miller to be a warning or an outcry to the government, as his actions took the story in a direction that led to almost the downfall of their society. Many people were hanged, and those who were not grew distant from each…
When fear grabs hold of somebody craziness erupts and there is no longer peace. When something goes wrong people tend to put the blame on anyone or anything besides themselves. In the crucible the blame is put on innocent women and this created mass hysteria and paranoia in the village. Kristallnacht was a night of violence that created mass hysteria and fear among the innocent Jews, just as Abigail did in The Crucible.…
The witch trials supply Reverend Parris in numerous key ways. Initially he was frightened that any indication of witchcraft be established in his home; he has been the Reverend after all, has not been establishing in effectively with the community. If it was established that it was his home that was the origin of witchcraft, he would end up being unemployed. However, it eventually ends up in his favor. As soon as witchcraft is found in his home, and his niece, daughter as well as his servant admit, out of blue they are all viewed as angels and saviors, come to save the city from the devil. Therefore, people actually began liking Parris and his family.…
In “The Crucible”, as the play opens up in act 1, Reverend Parris kneels down next to his “ill” daughter, Betty Parris. Rumor has it that Betty has been involved in some witchcraft. Because of Reverends paranoia, he had asked to keep Bettys “situation” undercover as he was scared that it may have an effect on his reputation. In my personal opinion, Reverend Parris’ responsibility should be his daughter. No one for sure knows that his daughter has been strictly effected by witchcraft. As a father, he needs to care about his daughters’ health and well-being instead of worrying about the outcome of the event.…
The people of Salem are of strong Puritan belief and display overcritical moral beliefs. These people will do anything to protect their reputation so they do not tarnish their community. After seeing the girls dancing in the forest Parris who is supposed to be a pious head of the religious community, recognizes the possibility that witchcraft is being practiced in his own household, and he worries about the possible danger to his reputation if the townsfolk learn that his daughter and niece could be consorting with the devil, which is shown when he says, “Abigail, I have fought here three long years to bend these stiff-necked people to me, and now, just now when some good respect is rising for me in the parish, you compromise my very character” (1.63-66). Early on in the play we learn that Elizabeth has a very high moral standard and that she is incapable of lying. The one moment in Elizabeth’s life when telling the truth would save her life, she lies to save her husband’s reputation. This is shown when Danforth asks Elizabeth if her husband had ever turned from her, she replied, “My husband is a goodly man” (III. 415). Parris and Elizabeth both do not show any integrity in either scene. Parris yells at his niece, Abigail, because of the crime she committed but the real reason he was angry was because he didn’t want her actions to tarnish his reputation. Elizabeth lied in a courtroom just to help save…