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Mrs. Galambos

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Crucible: Enduring Understandings

The Crucible has many enduring understandings that are relevant even to this day.

It demonstrates that justice cannot rule over greed and personal want and that all figures,

no matter who they are, have a little bit of goodness within them. It shows many things

that we struggle with today such as government corruption and deceit. But the most

relevant thing shown within the play is the sheer force and ability for change of human

want. This want drives the whole play forward from Abigail’s want of Proctor to

Putnam’s want of more land. The Crucible reinforces the adage that humans want what

they cannot have.

One of the many driving factors throughout the play was Mr. Putnam’s want for

more land. This was in fact the most important factor. His want for land forces him to

surface evidence against Giles Corey and John Proctor, two men in which he has land

disputes with:

PUTNAM. He had no right to sell it. It stands clear in my grandfather’s

will that all the land between the rive and-

PROCTOR. Your grandfather had a habit of willing land the never

belonged to him, if I may say it plain

GILES. That’s God’s truth; he nearly willed away my north pasture but

he knew I’d break his fingers before he’d set his name to it. Let’s get your

lumber home, John. I feel a sudden will to work coming on.

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PUTNAM. You load one oak of mind and you’ll fight to drag it home!

(1.79)

This shows how Putnam wants the land from Proctor. He knows he can’t have it and that

makes him crave it even more thus throwing his power with the church against John

Proctor and Giles Corey. Proctor and Giles stubbornness in defying Putnam only makes

him angrier and want the land and them out of the way more. The tract of land is most

likely only a few acres and doesn’t make a big difference in a huge area of land spanning

hundreds of acres. But because Putnam cannot have it he wants it more than he normally

would. This want of something will is a continuous theme throughout the crucible.

Mrs. Putnam’s want for children is another important driving factor that throws

many women into jail. She had 7 children die during birth and she knew that it was her

own fault, but her want for them forced her to blame others of witchcraft. She blamed all

of her midwives, including Tituba, Goody Osburn, and Goody Good. She blamed all of

them for witchcraft because her babies died while they were her midwives:

PARRIS. Sarah Good!

TITUBA. Aye, sir, and Goody Osburn.

MRS. PUTNAM. I knew it! Goody Osburn were midwife to me three

times, I begged you, Thomas, did I not? I begged him not to call Osburn

because I feared her. My babies always shriveled in her hands! (1.86)

This shows how Goody Putnam placed the ideas into the heads of everyone. Tituba was

in a bind, and excused of witchcraft, but if she confessed and gave names of others the

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eyes would be of her and onto somebody else. The names of Mrs. Putnam’s midwives

were readily available since her husband had said he suspected them of witchcraft earlier:

TITUBA: Oh, bless the Lord

HALE: When the Devil comes to you does he ever come- with another

person? (She stares up into his face.) Perhaps another person in the

village? Someone you know.

PARRIS: Who came with him?

PUTNAM: Sarah Good? Did you ever see Sarah Good with him? Or

Osburn? (1.85)

Although Tituba was trying not to blame anyone at the outset of her questioning, as the

questioning progressed Tituba became more and more worried she would be convicted.

This worry caused her to say names later and divert the questioning away from her. This

became one of the driving factors in the play, it was the factor that started off the

witchcraft trials and it was all based on the want of something that could not be had.

Abigial Williams want of John Proctor is the force that drives the whole play. She

knows that she cannot have him until Elizabeth Proctor is out of the way. She first tries to

get rid of her by drinking a charm in the forest. This charm fails, but the act of it taking

place causes the girls to hide it and Betty to lay motionless in the bed. It starts the whole

story off. Abigail is a young girl who was giving false by Proctor, Proctor knows it was

only a one time thing, but Abigail thinks there was something more to it:

ABIGAIL. John- I am waitin’ for you every night.

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PROCTOR. Abby, I never give you hope to wait for me. (1.75)

This quote how much Abigail still wants Proctor. It is later shown in the play that she

will do anything to get Elizabeth out of the way so that she can marry John Proctor. She

commits numerous other acts besides the drinking of chicken blood:

CHEEVER: The girl, the Williams girl, Abigail Williams, sir. She sat to

dinner in Reverend Parris’s house tonight, and without word nor warnin’

she falls to the floor. Like a struck beast, he says, and screamed a scream

that a bull would weap to hear. And he goes to save her; and, stuck two

inches in the flesh of her belly, he draws a needle out. And demandin’ of

her how she come to be so stabbed, she – testify it were your wife’s a

spirit pushed it in. (2.100)

It is later revealed that Abigail pushed the needle into herself. Also earlier in the scene

Mary Warren brings the poppet, on which the needle was found, to Elizabeth and said

that she had made it in court. Abigail had stuck the needle into the poppet and then sent

the court officials out to Elizabeth in hope of putting her away for good. This shows how

far Abigail will go to get John Proctor, sticking a needle into her abdomen. Everything

that Abigail does in the play shows that humans want what they cannot have.

Throughout the play people’s wants are shown, and what they will do to get these

things. The perfect way to get what you want, accusing the person you want something

from of witchcraft, came readily available and actually suggested by many of the people

of Salem. The people of Salem wanted what they couldn’t have and would do anything to

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get it. Without all of these wants in Salem, the Witchcraft trails would never have had the

people’s backing to exist. If all the neighbors were in good spirits with each other then

there could have been no accusers or accused. So without the want Salem never could

have existed.