Outline of Abigail Williams Character Analysis in The Crucible

In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Salem was a little town whose habitants were victims of Abigail Williamss lies. Her objective was to gain John Proctor's love but with her lies she ended up hurting him and everyone around him. The website Shmoop said that“ She has an eerie sense of how to manipulate others and gain control over them. All these things add up to make her an awesome antagonist.``(Shmoop.com) because during the play she demonstrates a manipulative and hateful behavior that led her to also be a leader.

Basically all Abigail Williams’s actions are moved by hate, which the dictionary describes as someone who is  full of or expressing hate malignant; or malevolent (Dictionary.com). The first proof we have is when she, at the beginning of the play, kind of describes John Proctor's wife, Elizabeth Proctor, by saying” It is a bitter woman, a lying cold, shivering woman” (Miller 12). And even though she is not directly hurting Elizabeth, we can clearly see that they don't like each other. That was just the surface of how spiteful she can be when it is about Elizabeth because later on we discover through another character that she actually did something worse.“Betty: You did. You drank charm to kill John Proctor's wife”(Miller 19). Of course that's just the first level of bitterness that Abigail can get to.

But her manipulative behavior is her most extreme level of bitterness; she talks so secure of herself that anyoneI would believe her. According to the dictionary she is one of those people that“ influence or attempting to influence the behavior or emotions of others for one’s own purposes” (Dictionary.com), and we can indeed appreciate this when in act one she threatens the girls to not confess or otherwise she will kill them ”Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word about the other things and i will come to you in the black of a terrible night and i will bring a pointy reckoning the will sudder you”(Miller 20), and by doing this the girls are so afraid of her that none of them say the truth causing this the worst disaster of the play. By almost the end of act two she drops her worse lies “I never sold myself! I'm a good girl!” (Miller 43)

 “I want to open myself, I want the light of god, I want the sweet love of Jesus!” (Miller 48)

By the end of act two she convinced everyone that she was a victim.

In simple words Abigail Williams was a leader, according to the dictionary is a person or thing that leads (Dictionary.com), and she was indeed leading and she was also the origin of all the disaster that occurred during the play. She started by manipulating her own crew by threatening them and afterwards the girls did what she told them to do, like telling them exactly what to say whenever they were being suspected by her uncle,Reverend Parris,”Listen now; if they be questioning us, tell them we danced- I told him as much already”(Miller 18). And the biggest proof is when John P. asks Mary Warren to tell the court the truth of what happened, but she was scared that by confessing Abigail would kill her ”She’ll kill me for saying that! Abby'll charge lechery on you mister Proctor”(Miller 80), so it really took Mary a long time to gather all her valiance to confess against Abigail, so by the beginning of act three MAry Warren makes up her mind and decides to confess against Abigail, but everything went wrong and mary fell into Abigails net again.

By the end of the play we can confirm that Abigail Wlliams is a complex character because through the play we can compare her to an onion; she had many layers, and the more you peeled her layers off, the more they made you cry. Also, she is a static character. She reminded the same throughout the entire play, and through her character traits, conflicts (that she caused) and motivations,  she was the genesis of the hysteria of an entire town and deaths of many people through her manipulative and hateful behavior that led her to also be a leader. Abigail Williams had a purpose and she was determined to accomplish it at all costs, even if it meant to be the puppet master behind the whole event.