John Proctor and comment Essay

The first opening scene is of some girls in the woods using magical rites to get the man of their dreams. The girls are mentioning the names of men they want and throwing what looks like herbs into a cauldron one girl gives a chicken to a black girl called Tituba who is at the side of the cauldron, and at this point she looks like the leader in these magical rites. The girls all shout at Tituba to make a spell to make the boys fall in love with them. One girl asks Abigail who she likes and another replies ‘John Proctor’ and then Abigail whispers something to Tituba who doesn’t seem to like what is being asked of her. Abigail then grabs the chicken from Tituba and throws it on the floor and then puts the blood of the chicken on her mouth. The girls are suddenly alerted to a man spying on them he even sees one of the girls naked they become hysterical and the next day we find that two of the younger girls have gone into a trance-like state probably because they were frightened of the consequences of their actions. The watcher’s daughter Betty Parriss was one of the girls in a trance. The watcher was none other than Reverend Samuel Parriss who is also the uncle of Abigail Williams. Reverend Parriss is terrified by what he has seen. He is quite hysterical as he knows that if a witch was to live within his own home the fingers of the village of Salem would point towards him and his days in the Church would be over, but even worse they could hang him. The Reverend questions Abigail in Betty’s bedroom, whilst she is in the trance like state,on what he has witnessed in the woods and he warns her that his whole life depends upon her answering ‘truthfully’. He knows he has many enemies in the village and needs Abigail to tell him the ‘truth’. This would of course be the truth that he wished to hear and it appears from his hysteria that he wants anything but the truth. At this point Abigail actually answers quite truthfully and tries to explain to her Uncle that they were only messing about by saying ‘it were sport, uncle. ‘