Tracing Character Development: Hale and Abigail

Reverend Hale

Reverend Hale arrives at Salem as an ambitious intellectual, eager to use his expertise in Salem. However, the hysterical superstition and injustice of the trials disillusion him. When John presents his case and is arrested, Hale denounces the trials and leaves the court. Eventually he returns to Salem, this time trying to sway the convicted to confess so that they will not be hanged. He begs Danforth to pardon the prisoners, but the judge refuses.


Invention: Hale’s enthymeme behind his decision to leave the court

Major Premise: Reason, rather than fear and superstition, should be used in the search for truth.

Minor Premise: Danforth believes Abigail’s frenzied claims over Proctor’s reasoned defense.

Conclusion: The trials are flawed.


Arrangement:

Hale uses a skillfully arranged argument to convince Tituba to confess:

“Take courage, you must give us all their names. How can you bear to see this child suffering? Look at her, Tituba. [. . .] Look at her God-given innocence; her soul is so tender; we must protect her, Tituba; the Devil is out and preying on her like a beast upon the flesh of the pure lamb. God will bless you for your help.” (47)

Relying almost entirely on pathos, Hale nonetheless uses a logical progression to persuade the woman. He begins with a clear statement: Tituba must confess the names of others. He appeals to Betty’s innocence in order to convince Tituba, and he finishes with a promise of God’s blessing for her help.

He retains his oratorical talent to the end of the play, but this time he tries to extract confessions so that people will live, not because he believes they are witches.


Style:

In the beginning, Hale’s style of speech is scholarly to the point of pretension. He wants to prove his expertise, and so uses every opportunity to do so. For example, he says, “We cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone [. . .]” (38). He uses jargon, such as when he lists various magical monsters: “incubi and succubi, your witches [. . . and] your wizards [. . .]” (39).

At the end, however, he is stripped of his pride. He makes no pretension of being wise or scholastic. His language is desperate, filled with emotion, such as when he tells Elizabeth, “Woman, before the laws of God we are as swine! We cannot read his will!” (132). His language is filled with metaphor; he “has blood on [his] head” (131) and they are all swine. He has become desperate and emotionally distraught.


Memory: Hale’s use of Salem’s cultural memory.

Those in Salem all know the basic tenets of Christianity and much about the Devil’s ways. Hale capitalizes on what they already know, but also instructs: “We cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone [. . .]” (38). He also relies on the memories of others, and their testimony, to apply his own knowledge.


Delivery:

At the beginning of the play, Hale’s idealism is reflected in his way of speaking. Look at the way he describes his books:

“Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated. In these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises. [. . . .] Have no fear—we shall find him [the Devil] out if he has come among us, and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face!” (39)

By the end, however, he has lost faith in the use of reason in Salem. Instead of learning and intellectual investigations, the man desperately pursues the concrete goal of saving those falsely convicted. As the narrator comments, “He is steeped in sorrow, exhausted, and more direct than he ever was” (129). When he meets Danforth in the jail, Hale skips introductions completely and says, “You must pardon them. They will not budge” (129), and when the judge asks why Hale has returned to Salem, Hale cries out, “There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!!” (131). His frank speaking reflects his change into a man concerned with the tangible rather than the invisible.


Abigail Williams

Abigail Williams is bitter and frustrated. She resents Elizabeth firing her, and she is embittered by John Proctor ending their affair. Her low status as an unmarried orphan is frustrating, as are comments from those that condemn her for rumors of her affair. Oppressed and angry, she and several others dance in the woods at night while Tituba practices voodoo. When Hale begins his quest for witches, Abigail seizes the opportunity to become the most powerful character in Salem. All she need do is fake a fit, and an individual is sentenced to hanging. She also uses the trials to get Elizabeth convicted. In the end, Abigail steals Parris’ money and runs away; according to legend, she ends up a prostitute.


Invention: Abigail’s warped syllogism

Major premise: If a man sleeps with a woman, he must love her.

Minor premise: John Proctor slept with Abigail.

Conclusion: Proctor loves Abigail.

Obviously, young Abigail is a little confused. Her syllogism is a logical fallacy. Nonetheless, she believes it, demonstrated when she says, “You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!” (24).


Arrangement:

Abigail, dependent upon the emotions of her listeners, uses arrangement to dramatize everything she says. In the first act, for example, she combines parallelism and climax to “climb the ladder,” which heightens the emotional hysteria she’s encouraging:

“I want to open myself! [. . .] I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him, I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!” (48)

Using parallelism throughout her speech, Abigail also builds up to her accusations so that they have maximum impact. Her arrangement of the material begins with her journey away from God, then her return to him, and finally the most important part: the names of witches.


Style:

Abigail, relying almost solely on pathos, relies heavily on style to dramatize her actions. Her language is filled with repetition of various sorts, as the above passage illustrates. (It contains both anaphora and symploce.) She also uses imagery in her speeches in order to bring her “visions” to life for listeners. Mary Warren’s spirit is personified as a bird, for example.


Memory:

Abigail capitalizes on the superstition in Salem’s community to instill fear in them. The common cultural memory has a specific idea of the symptoms of witchcraft, and Abigail draws upon these in her acting. She pretends Mary’s spirit comes to her in the form of a bird, she is chilled by winds no one else feels, and she pretends a witch stabs her with a needle via a poppet. She must have heard stories of similar behavior before; by using them herself, she adds credibility to her claims of witchcraft.


Delivery:

Abigail relies almost entirely on emotion to manipulate the court proceedings. Her delivery is intentionally irregular and confusing, which disturbs witnesses and convinces them of the Devil’s involvement. Her acting is as critical as her words; she shakes, collapses, and points at invisible things. Her speech is punctuated with cries, and she echoes everything Mary says to appear bewitched in the third act. Her power depends on breaking expectations for sane communication.

It is her lack of words that is most informative, however, when she flees Salem at the end of the play.