Character, Conflict, and Deception

Miller’s depiction of conflict and his character development are masterful in The Crucible, as evidenced by the “tangled web” he weaves throughout the play. Aside from the main conflict of accusers versus the accused, Miller includes several lesser conflicts in his plot, many of which revolve around Abigail and the various lies she tells. We see that Abigail is in conflict with her uncle, who is troubled by the fact that she hasn’t been hired by another family in the seven months since she stopped working for the Proctors (1.1, p. 8). Abigail is also in conflict with her friends, because it is she who swears them to silence, even thought they want to come clean about what happened in the woods (“—let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word…and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night…” 1.1, p. 12). And of course, Abigail is in conflict with both Proctors, the one because she wants to be with him and he refuses, and the other because she wants to take her place. But, for all of these conflicts, Abigail stays true to the course she’s set for herself. She may be involved in many external conflicts, but we don’t really ever see her struggle with internal conflicts. The Proctors, on the other hand, are a different story.

Now, the Proctors are an excellent example of a tangled web of both internal and external conflicts. John Proctor wrestles internally with the conflict of his desire for Abigail coupled with saving his marriage. He knows that his lust for Abigail is wrong, so he’s doing his best to work it out with Elizabeth, put his affair in the past, and atone for his deception. Then, of course, because he chooses his wife over his girlfriend, that sets up one of Abigail’s conflicts, which also winds up exacerbating Proctor’s conflicts with Parris and the town. Even Elizabeth, stainless though her reputation may be, is not safe from conflict. She’s trying to figure out how to forgive her husband for his transgressions, but she’s so deeply hurt that she’s making things worse, so she’s struggling with those issues internally, because she’s not capable of the deception that has made her into a victim. Externally, Elizabeth makes no secret of the fact that she despises Abigail and everything the girl stands for, so that does not help her cause when she becomes one of the accused.

While there are several other examples of external and internal conflicts in the play, I want to make sure that I spend some time talking about character, because Miller does an excellent job of revealing character through his use of imagery.

When we talk about character development, particularly in this play, we’re looking at the words characters use about themselves and the words others use to describe them. Since playwrights must be economical in their word choice, they don’t have the luxury of devoting paragraphs to create character sketches—they must choose a few powerful words that get their point across succinctly, just as poets do.

An example of a short poem that’s packed with effective imagery is Billy Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry.” He describes different ways we can look at poetry with the intent of discovering its meaning: he wants us to proceed as if the poem is a color filter through which to view the world, or a buzzing beehive, or watching a mouse find its way out of a maze, or going on a waterskiing adventure, or feeling the way through a darkened room to a light switch. Instead, his students just want to “tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it.”

I mention this poem in particular, not just because of the ending image, but because of how Collins makes us feel when we read the earlier images: there’s a sense of wonder, of discovery, of curiosity, all because of the words he chooses. That’s the excitement he wants his students to find in reading poetry, not the exercise of torture that they make of it in practice.

In the same way that Collins does, Miller makes us feel certain things about his characters, based on the images he uses. For example, “your name in the town…is entirely white” coupled with “there be no blush about my name” (1.1, p. 8) makes us wonder whether Abigail is trustworthy right from the start, just based on the colors Miller chooses to reference. White symbolizes truth and goodness and purity, while blush symbolizes imperfection, impurity, and tarnish. It suggests that she’s a maiden no longer, hinting that she’s had carnal knowledge of a man. Proctor’s line “Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer” (1.2, p. 31) makes take a step back for a moment, to think about whether Proctor really was in the wrong for having an affair, or whether Elizabeth’s coldness drove him to it. In those four words, we learn more about how icy Elizabeth has been to Proctor since his affair with Abigail than we would have with a full-page description in a novel. Miller’s image here clearly shows us that Elizabeth has been so cold and so unforgiving that even alcohol would freeze in her presence, so devoid of warmth and love is she. Suffice it to say, Miller knows how to make the most of literary devices and employs them to great dramatic effect in this play.