Of all the heart-breaking, gut-wrenching, and emotionally taxing tales I have ever known, this is by far the greatest. We see innocents condemned, fearful men and women lie for their lives and the sake of their loved ones; we see Abigail Williams, John Proctor, Reverend Hale, Giles Corey, so many complex people in a story that will never be fully understood. Tears well up in my eyes from the raw pain blasted into my soul from this agonizing plot of despair; blind condemners being played by the hand of a heart-broken, mind beaten, soul torn young girl. Who is innocent? Nobody is ever innocent, this fact has been explained lightly in A Handmaid’s Tale, and it is personified here. Oh the agony! Writing for this is so incredibly difficult, and yet the message arising is incredible in its own unforgettable way, therefore is must be said. Who do you side with in this story? I side with no one and everyone. They are all at fault, but God stop your people from destroying themselves! Abigail, used and left as a whore, what else could she do? As I read this, it is all I can do to not scream aloud! Why? Because I can do nothing, I am a helpless useless bystander, watching these events unfold with no way to stop the severe tragedy unfolding before my eyes. Abigail loves John, she loves him. He used her in his lecherous lust, and then he and his wife cast her out. Abigail is driven past the realms of reality when she realizes what has happened to her. If I could reach out to anyone in this story, it would be her.
I feel like this is going to become another Brave New World for me; I may be the only person on this road. Yes, Abigail condemned many “innocents” to their deaths, yes she lied in the face of the law and the law’s god, yes she is the ring leader to a giant circus of a condemnation scheme of retribution, but why? Did she do it just for the Hell of it? No! She has been broken, used, betrayed, cast out and away from the man she loves, the same man who betrayed her. Can you honestly say that you would not be completely distraught, unstable, and driven purely mad if you were in Abigail’s position? Your life is ruined! Who will marry an impudent deflowered, presumably whore, girl in a puritan extremist ultra-theocratic society? Certainly nobody with any substantial valor or integrity, nobody with any sort of good standing. And if you did marry someone noble, somebody better than a town drunk? Well he would do away with you after your first night in bed. Not to mention the fact that you are in love with someone else, but the man who has betrayed you. Abigail does what many people do in these situations; disassociation of guilt. She cannot fathom that her love would be such a betraying hypocrite, and as we see in the removed Scene II of Act II, she disassociates the hypocrisy to everyone else in the town, which is truly not all that false. I feel incredibly strong sympathy and adoration for Abigail, more than any other character from any book, play, movie, or story I have ever known. Am I saying that she is the white angel in this story? Not by any means! She was driven into shear madness and thus began condemning everything that caused her pain except for the one thing she loved. Can we place blame on any one person for the initial split atom in this immense chain reaction? Not without blindness. Let us analyze this chain. The end result is the execution of those who have not committed the prescribed crime. The cause for this is Abigail. Abigail accused them because she was driven mad. She was driven mad due to the actions of John Proctor. We could draw the line to Proctor and drop the guilt on his head, but this has a deeper less visible connection. The actions drove Abigail insane due to the repercussions that will arise from them. The repercussions are in place due to the overly zealous theocracy that rules the land. The theocracy is in place because the theocracy is desired by the society. Society is the root of all problems! Who makes up society? The citizens of the society. So the circle of guilt is complete, people are condemned to hang because of their own ridiculously accepted and formed society; another case of a horrifyingly destructive cycle of emotion and “piety”. Is there no way to end such madness? Why, the tree of ignorant life, the forbidden land of Eden, the painless, non traumatic, lacking of conflicting emotion world and society created by Aldous Huxley. Yet, much like we have always done in the past and will always continue to do until something truly global and devastating happens, we will remain in our corrupting society of conforming to anguish and accepting of woeful despair.
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