The Down in Fall

Abigail Williams should have hung in the gallows, with her body’s weight pulling down on her neck. Such a gruesome punishment would be lacking of force, because of the deliberate and vindictive acts she commits. The play starts off with Abigail being a rather trustworthy character. After one lie in the beginning of the play, Abigail continues to tell even more lies in order to defend previous claims as the plot progresses. With each lie, Abigail only becomes more deceitful. Abigail was feeding the fire that would eventually engulf her when it got too wild and out of control. Abigail’s downfall was made possible because of her negative use of ethos, her manipulation of the truth, and lastly through her deliberate use of others.

Abigail is a master at wielding ethos as a weapon with which to subdue her victims. Throughout the events of the play, Abigail used ethos to invoke sympathy from the other characters and more importantly from the courts. One instance where Abigail utilizes ethos is when she says: “I have been near to murdered every day because I done my duty pointing out the Devil’s people – and this is my reward?” (Miller 108) Abigail is attempting to satisfy one purpose with that; to gain the support of the court system. Abigail was known by the court in Salem for diligently searching out witches, and she seeks to live out that reputation, even when she herself is being accused by the court. She simply says that she should not have to suffer any accusations, since she is making the finding of witches easy for the court with her high turn-in rate.

One instance where Abigail uses ethos as a weapon is when she says: “And mark this. 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 some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you”(20). Abigail is attempting to assert her power in that statement. When Mary Warren and a few other girls propose the idea of confessing their act of dancing in the woods, Abigail lashes out violently when they say that they would be whipped for their crime rather than killed. She scares them from mentioning their acts with this statement, where she follows by recounting the death of her parents and how she could make her own friends suffer a similar fate. What was even more surprising was how she seemed surprised when Mary Warren said that they would get whipped. Abigail cynically repeated it, saying she was not the one getting whipped, almost as a foreshadowing of what she had in store for Mary. That shows more of who Abigail really is, an insidious character who abuses and manipulates others for her own purposes.

Abigail would have been the first to die of witchcraft if she had told the truth since the beginning. As stated in the Bible, humans are created with the intention of choosing to do well. After all, God created them in his own image, and “God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good”(Genesis 1:31). However, God also created humans with free will, where they could freely choose to not do God’s will. In the beginning, Abigail is being interrogated about the dancing in the woods as observed by Reverend Parris. Abigail’s first lie comes in at this time, and is directed towards Tituba. Abigail does not even consider that dancing in the woods or drinking blood may be a part of Tituba’s culture, or perhaps it would not be seen as a negative ritual in Barbados. Instead, she freely reverts to a lie, saying that Tituba made her drink the blood. The reasoning for that must have simply been that being accused of being a witch only leads to death, which is something that tends to be avoided, even if she has to wrongfully doom others to it. Unfortunately, Tituba was present at the dancing in the woods and happened to be at Abigail’s disposal because of that. It is inevitable that Abigail’s lies are one-sided, as many other institutions of the devil are, such as the seven deadly sins.

Abigail’s initial lie eventually becomes a habit she uses to bring her rivals down. Abigail has two main objectives in the play: to simply stay alive, and to acquire the affection of John Proctor. Abigail sees lying as the only way to go about this. She has far too many rivals, and somehow needs to get rid of them, before they get rid of her. Abigail’s infamous lies were like a disease, because other characters were fooled so easily by them. Part of this relates to her established ethos, which allowed her to charm her way into seeming trustworthy. By getting the good side of the authorities, she had their ear when it came time to accuse others of being witches. She takes advantage of this, and tells further lies when necessary.

Another tactic Abigail used was equivocation. Equivocation is the telling of the truth, but so as to mislead, making it a lie at the same time. Mary Warren gives a doll to Elizabeth Proctor at one time. Unfortunately, this small act of kindness dragged on to be the seeming downfall of both characters. Of course, Abigail had a part in this minute twist of fate. Abigail saw Mary stick a needle into the doll. Then Abigail put on a few antics at the Parris house where she pierced herself with a needle, claiming that Elizabeth’s spirit had stabbed her. Unfortunately, such trivial evidence was enough to arrest Elizabeth, thus leaving John Proctor available for the taking. Through that, Abigail was ultimately able to achieve one of the two goals she set out to achieve.

The most insidious of tactics wielded by Abigail was her deliberate use of others. As already mentioned, Abigail had two main objectives: to remain alive, and to win the affection of John Proctor. Yet, Abigail has too many rivals getting in the way of such plans. What she decides to do is to use them as they are available, attributing false crimes to them simply to get them out of her way. With the authorities under the influence of her charm, and hence accepting her every falsehood, Abigail had no problem with moving others out of the way, even if by force.

Among Abigail’s two goals is the captivation of John Proctor’s ardor. At a time in the past, however, Proctor once gave in to temptation and had an affair with Abigail. He could not have made a worse decision, as that affair that sparked Abigail’s lust for him. After a trail of lies begun by Abigail reaches Proctor, he is the one who is condemned to die in the end, and willingly accepts to die as a martyr of his morals. He said at one point, “She thinks to dance with me on my wife's grave! And well she might, for I thought of her softly. God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a whore's vengeance, and you must see it; I set myself entirely in your hands” (110). He thinks nothing more than to die simply to escape the misery that Abigail would inflict upon him should he live. Usually, it is not perceived as a positive attribute if a person has this kind of affect on others. The irony with this situation is also that Abigail wished to reunite with Proctor, yet her lies got the better of him, and he chose to die for them in an attempt to redeem himself. Sadly, the one who suffered was the holiest character in the play, and the least deserving of that end.

Abigail is a highly distasteful character. People were created by God to do well, yet they also had free will too, which enabled people to work against God if they chose to. With that concept engraved in one’s mine, it would be reasonable to think it preferable if a person acted well, as God wished them to. Yet, through charming, lies, and the abuse of others, Abigail does not fit that description. Abigail was completely lacking in scruples, and that is why she committed those atrocities. Abigail’s downfall thus rests in her faulty morals. Apparently, the fire of evil has consumed her as a person and the wind has scattered her ashes to the other characters and audience who see her as now insidious. That is how Abigail’s derogative moral choices make her plausibility diminish and thus contribute to her fall.