COMMON MOD - THE CRUCIBLE QUOTES

ur so cooked

paradox - authorial commentary

“A paradox in whose grip we still live”

danforth - false dichotomy

“a person is either with this court, or against it. there be no road between”

hale - faith vs logic

“the devil is precise, his marks are as definite as stone”

hale - guilt and disillusionment

“There is blood on my head!” + “I denounce these proceedings, I quit this court!”

proctor - exposing the court’s hypocrisy

“common vengeance writes the law”

authorial commentary - trials as vengeance

“long held hatreds of neighbours could be openly expressed”

authorial commentary - abigail’s deceit

“a strikingly beautiful girl with an endless capacity for dissembling”

abigail’s manipulation of theocratic righteousness through feigned piety

“I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! … I saw Sarah Good with the Devil!”

authorial commentary - danforth

“exact loyalty to his position and cause”

danforth - dismissal of evidence

“pretense” + “whore’s vengeance”

danforth - condemning those who do not blindly follow (irony)

“those who weep for these weep for corruption!”

proctor’s tragic preservation of integrity

“I have given them my soul, leave me my name!”

HUAC equates not falsely confessing to…

“trafficking with spirits”

elizabeth proctor - proctor’s death is in his catharsis, making up for his sin as a “lecherous man”

“he has his goodness now”

stage direction, tragic ending

“drums rattle like bones in the morning air”

rebecca nurse - refuses to condemn herself for witchcraft

“it is a lie… i cannot, i cannot.”

hale - highlights the absurdity of the trials

“if rebecca nurse be tainted, then nothing’s to stop the whole green world from burning!”