Wednesday, October 16, 2013

What are three examples of when Abigail lied in The Crucible?

Abigail first lies to her uncle, Reverend Parris, in Act One, when she tells him that she and the other girls "never conjured spirits."  Mrs. Putnam soon after tells him that she sent her daughter, Ruth Putnam, to Parris's slave, Tituba, to conjure the spirits of Mrs. Putnam's dead babies to find out who murdered them.  In other words, they were absolutely conjuring spirits in the woods before Betty Parris became ill.


She lies again...

Abigail first lies to her uncle, Reverend Parris, in Act One, when she tells him that she and the other girls "never conjured spirits."  Mrs. Putnam soon after tells him that she sent her daughter, Ruth Putnam, to Parris's slave, Tituba, to conjure the spirits of Mrs. Putnam's dead babies to find out who murdered them.  In other words, they were absolutely conjuring spirits in the woods before Betty Parris became ill.


She lies again in Act One when she insists, "There be no blush about my name."  Parris has confronted her with the rumor that Elizabeth Proctor will not sit near something "so soiled" in church, but Abigail insists that she has an untarnished reputation.  She knows very well that her affair with the married John Proctor would absolutely blacken her name in the village.


Abigail lies again, just a short time later, when she tells Betty, "I told [your father] everything; he knows now [...]."  Betty is frantic and yells back that Abigail didn't admit to drinking blood and working a charm to kill Elizabeth Proctor; in other words, Abby tries to lie to Betty about confessing the whole truth to Parris, and Betty knows that she has not.


Honestly, the list goes on and on.  She lies when she says that Tituba is a witch, when she claims that she herself has been with the Devil, when she accuses other women of being witches, when she testifies against Elizabeth Proctor and Mary Warren, and on and on. 

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