In the play, “The Crucible”, by Arthur Miller, the Salem Witch trials are a collective response caused by many people in the town of Salem. It is hard to pinpoint who exactly was responsible, as every member of the town said something, didn’t say something, or acted in a way that helped encourage those in charge. Whether they were locked in a struggle for power, were jealous of another person, or even if they made a simple mistake several months ago, almost everyone in the town were responsible in some way for the trials. That being said, the three most important contributors to the witch trials were Abigail Williams, John Proctor, and Reverend Hale.
Abigail Williams was by far the largest contributor. She, in fact, was the only reason the girls were ever caught dancing in the woods; they were caught because she was drinking blood to kill Goody Proctor. Even after that occurred, she was the one who called out people’s names and the other girls followed suit. This is exemplified when Mary Warren is accused after trying to tell the judge that the girls were lying, “But god made my face; you cannot want to tear my face. Envy is a deadly sin, Mary…. Oh, Mary this is a black art to change one’s shape. No, I cannot, I cannot stop my mouth; it’s God’s work I do” (Miller 115). This is key because not only is she calling people witches for no apparent reason, she is blaming one of her friends for the spread of witchcraft, and Mary then blames Proctor. She basically caused the entire event because of her jealousy of Proctor’s wife and her want to be with Proctor. The other girls were not nearly as impassioned with the accusing as Abigail, and it’s doubtful that the trials would have continued, not to mention actually even happened, without her presence.
John Proctor is another important figure because he inherently is the cause of Abigail’s accusations. Because he had an affair with her, she was drinking blood to kill his wife, and she was caught and had to make up a fanciful lie. It is not a sane reason for her to start accusing people of witchcraft, but it was actually John’s fault when looked at the events from a chronological point of view. This is made apparent when Abigail says, “… I know you, John – you are this moment singing secret hallelujahs that your wife will hang” (152)! Abigail clings to this desperate hope that John will love her to the point that she tries everything in her power to have his wife hung, including continuing pointless accusations of witchcraft. While John had no part in the actual proceedings of the witch trials besides his own, a great deal of the blame for the beginning of them rests on him.
Reverend Hale is a third major cause of the Salem witch trials. While by the end of the book he realizes that he is wrong, if he had never come to the town in the first place, the girls would have been passed off as being sick because Reverend Parris would have been too afraid of losing power to accuse them of being bewitched. Hale thinks that he knows everything about witchcraft, that he can diagnose being a witch, and that makes him dangerous. He supplied the girls with the information they needed to make convincing accusations. “Tries to fly…. Ah! The stoppage of prayer – that is strange… Perhaps some bird invisible to others comes to you…” (42-43). He feeds them the symptoms that one could find in a victim of witchcraft, and they replicate them to make it seem believable. For instance, when Abigail accuses Mary Warren, she sees an invisible bird in the rafters. This is an exact replica of the sign that Hale asked Betty if she saw when trying to see if she had been bewitched. While Hale redeems himself by the end of the play, he was a major cause of the accusations. Without him poking around, Abigail never would have needed to say that Tituba put spells on them in the first place.
While the three people above vary in reasons for the cause of the Salem Witch trials, they all had an important hand in creating them. Abigail for wanting John and being jealous. John Proctor for having an affair with Abigail and encouraging her. Hale for coming to the town and providing the kindling for the wildfire of the townspeople’s imaginations. All three were in part responsible, as well as many other people in the town.
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