The last two acts of The Crucible are highly dramatic. Focusing on two key moments, explore and analyse their significance to the play as a whole. You must comment on how these relate to the social and historical context of the play. Introduction This essay is set out to analyse and explore on two key moments in the play called The Crucible. My two key moments are in both Act 3 and Act 4. Act 3 explains why she dismissed Abigail Williams, the servant of theirs, and her affair with John Proctor, he husband.
Act 4 is the moment where John Proctor signs a paper showing his confession that he was seeing the Devil. Now I am going to explain in more detail what happened . Just before this key moment, Proctor admits that he had an affair with Abigail Williams. Then the key moment starts of with Danforth ordering Parris to bring Elizabeth to the court, because Proctor states that Elizabeth never lies and will agree with him that he had an affair. If Elizabeth admits to firing Abigail for her affair with Proctor, Danforth will charge Abigail.
Cheever brings Elizabeth to the court, where she says that she fired Abigail because she displeased her, and because she thought that her husband fancied Abigail. She says that Proctor never committed lechery. Proctor cries out for Elizabeth to tell the truth for he has confessed, but Danforth orders Elizabeth to leave. The characters have turning points in the key moments, and I am going to discuss what happens to Elizabeth Proctor and Danforth in this key moment. Elizabeth Proctor shares a similarly strict link to justice and moral principles like John Proctor.
She is a woman who has great confidence in her own morality and in the ability of a person to maintain a sense of righteousness even when this principle clashes with strict Christian belief. Although she is regarded as a woman of blameless honesty, she causes her husband to be full of guilt when she lies about his affair with Abigail, thinking that this will save him. However, Elizabeth can be a cold and demanding woman whose unfriendly behaviour she feels may have driven her husband to adultery and whose constant suspicions of her husband makes their marriage tense.
Deputy Governor Danforth is a strict yet a practical man more interested in caring for the dignity and greatness of the court than in breaking justice or behaving with any sense of fairness. He approaches the witchcraft trials with a strict link to rules and law that involved any sense of reasonability, for under his legal rite, an accusation of witchery automatically involves a conviction. When Elizabeth say ‘no, sir’ referring the question being asked by Danforth, “Is your husband a lecher! “, this is a dramatic moment.
Firstly ‘no, sir’ is very dramatic because it is ironic. John Proctor said before “In her life, sir, she have never lied. ” which is wrong when she said no because that is a lie, that Proctor is not a lecher, not having an affair with Abigail Williams. The second thing which makes the moment dramatic and a crucial moment for the audience, is that ‘no, sir’ is affecting the audience because it is dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when the audience understand the implications of words or a situation when the character does not.
This is true with Elizabeth, because the audience know that Proctor is a lecher, having an affair with Abigail, but she says no, which is not the right answer. The audience know the answer, but it wasn’t said. When Elizabeth said ‘no, sir’ it all shows a crucial moment to the entire plot because it gives Proctor a bad name to the society, that he is lying about his affair with Abigail. Also, Danforth would of charged Abigail Williams for lying about the witchcraft, and shows that she had and affair with Proctor, and the whole big situation would be ended. This didn’t happen, because of Elizabeth saying no, letting the whole story go on.
