The Crucible (themes and quotes)

The Crucible (themes and quotes)

1. Religion

   • "The psalm! She cannot bear to hear the Lord's name!"
   • "I have trouble enough without I come five mile to hear him preach only hellfire and bloody damnation."
   • "He feels himself allied with the best minds in Europe - kings, philosophers, scientists and ecclesiasts"
   • "The Devil is precise: the marks of his presence are definite as stone"
   • "Such a Christian that will not come to church!"
   • "The man's ordained, therefore the light of God is in him"
   • "Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small."
   • "Is the accuser always holy now?"

2. Injustice and intolerance

   • "her slave sense has warned her that...trouble eventually lands on her back."
   • "Through its leaded panes
   • "The roof rafters are exposed, and the wood colours are raw and unmellowed."
   • "golden candlesticks"

3. Deception

   • "An endless capacity for dissembling."
   • "I have a sense for heat, John, and yours has drawn me to my window."
   • "I never knew all the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women."
   • "Like a struck beast....stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, he draw a needle out."

4. Self-interest

   • "They will howl me out of Salem for such corruption in my house."
   • "My ministry's at stake, my ministry."
   • "I had to show my frostbitten hands like some London beggar!"
   • "I do not wish to be put out like the cat whenever some majority feels the whim."

5. Reputation

   • "There be no blush about my name"
   • "I will not black my face for any of them."
   • "I am an official of the court."

6. Vengeance

   • "a lying, cold, snivelling woman"
   • "Let either of you breathe a word...and I shall come to you in the black of some terrible night"
   • "You think it God's work you should never lose a child...and I bury all but one?"
   • "There is a party in this church...Why, then I must find it and join it."
   • "Sarah Good? Did you ever see Sarah Good? Or Osburn?"
   • "Now he goes to court and claims that from that day to this he cannot keep a pig alive for more than four weeks"
   • "the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom"

7. Mass hysteria

   • "Mr Collins saw her goin' over Ingersoll's barn"
   • "There are wheels within wheels, and fires within fires!
   • "I never called him! Tituba, Tituba..."
   • "staring as though inspired"
   • "I saw Goody Hawkins..."
   • "where she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel"
   • "I feel a misty coldness climbin' up my back, and the skin on my skull begin to creep"
   • "And the wind, God's icy wind, will blow!"

8. Honesty and truthfulness

   • "Abby, we've got to tell."
   • "I have seen them all through their silly seasons"
   • "We have all heard of your great charities"
   • "it's hard to think so pious a woman be secretly a Devil's bitch"
   • "I nailed the roof upon the church, I hung the door"
   • "We will slide together into our pit"

9. Suspicion and lack of trust

   • "Then he lifts out the ladle and tastes. He is not quite pleased."
   • "What keeps you so late?"
   • "with a sense of reprimanding herself for having forgot"
   • "If it were not Abigail...would you falter now?"
   • "An everlasting funeral marches round your heart."
   • "Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer!"
   • "It's winter in here yet."
   • "I see now your spirit twists around the single error of my life, and I will never tear it free!"