Q13 How do you respond to Mary Warren in The Crucible?
[Look below at Mary Warren bullet point in higher tier Q14 about power.]
- Look at how she is described in the stage directions by Miller - naive and subservient.
- She had no real friends and by supporting Abigail she found favour at last.
- She gains confidence to stand up to Proctor's threatened whipping because she is doing 'God's work' as an official of the court.
- Yet she strives with her conscience over the incident with the poppet; she knows Abigail is lying. She knows the truth.
- We are impressed by her decision to tell the court 'it were all pretence' and then...
- We are shocked and horrified to watch her realisation that it is Abigail who holds all the power and she chooses Abigail's side successfully and fatally demolishing John's defence.
Who are you going to choose? Choose wisely!
- Proctor? Affair with Abigail, betrayal of Elizabeth, his own naivety that the trials will vanish and not touch him? The fact that he cannot confess? He cannot even save Elizabeth?
- Hale? His wide-eyed innocence and lack of understanding of human nature? Believes John all too late? His last minute desperate plea to Proctor to confess and failure to do so? His naive faith that the innocent have nothing to fear and that the court's justice will prevail?
- Giles Corey? He unwittingly dropped his wife in it with her books 'what signify the reading of books' and his suggestion that her reading stopped his prayer? He hadn't long learned his prayers, so say Miller's stage directions, so no surprise that he couldn't remember them! But when his wife is arrested he is a changed man, desperate and willing to try anything... What does his guilt lead him to do? [see also Q 13 of higher tier answer on Giles.]
No comments:
Post a Comment