Many people may say that rumors can't kill, but in the play The Crucible, Arthur Miller explains that rumors can in fact kill. The Crucible has a lot of themes like fear, superstition, pride, and stubbornness, but one theme that many people might find most important is the rumors that went around Salem in 1692 about witchcraft. A rumor that began as a child's game or a game of revenge became something greater and much more dangerous. No one ever thought that things were going to get out of hand. Nobody ever knew what the consequences of lying would be. When exactly did things get out of hand? In The Crucible, many innocent people got killed because of a selfish girl. She thought that by lying she would get what she wanted. Things didn't go as she planned.
Abigail Williams, a seventeen-year-old girl, niece of reverend Parris was the one who started all the chaos. All she wanted was John Proctor to be hers. She wanted to destroy Elizabeth, John Proctors wife because of it. First she tried witchcraft in the forest with local girl of Salem, and then she tried accusing her of being a witch. She stuck a needle into a poppet that Mary Warren was going to give to Elizabeth. She went to the extreme by sticking a needle two inches into her own belly, just so people would believe that Elizabeth tried to kill her by using witchcraft. Abigail's love for John Proctor made her blind on what she was doing. She accused a lot of innocent people. People thought she accused them because she didn't want people suspecting her or they thought that they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. .
Many people died because of Abigail's lies. The girls didn't realize that by protecting themselves they would be killing several people. Few of those people were Giles Cory who refused to confess. Rebecca Nurse who was also killed because Ann Putnam said that she cursed her for not being able to have children.