1. Summary: the story is about these girls who go into a forest with a slave named Tituba to practice witchcraft . Reverend Parris surprises them and his daughter, Betty, falls into a coma. The townspeople suspect witchcraft but Abigail, the niece of Parris, swears they were only dancing. John Proctor enters Betty’s room and Abigail tries to rekindle their past affair. Reverend Hale, a witch expert, is called and suspects witchcraft. Abigail accuses Tituba and Hale goes to Tituba and she admits that they were communicating with the devil but she also mentions other towns people who communicated with the devil. Then Abigail and Betty start saying other names of people in the town. People start getting arrested so they can go to court. Abigail accuses Elizabeth, Proctors wife, of witchcraft by sending a doll with Mary and saying that Elizabeth stabbed her with a needle through the doll. She gets arrested also. Proctor demands Mary that she confess to the Judge but the other girls insist that Mary is bewitching them. So, Proctor tells the court that Abigail and him had an affair and her accusation is based on pure jealousy. He brings in Elizabeth to testify but she protects Proctors dignity and denies the affair she knew about. Procter is arrested because Mary accuses him of communicating with the devil . Parris and Hale insist the prisoners to confess seeing the devil. Abigail ran away with Parris’s money. Elizabeth doesn’t want Proctor to confess but Proctor confesses that he saw the devil. The Judge wants him to sign his confession so it could be hung on the church door. He rips it and is hung.
2. Theme: I think the theme would have to be, baring the truth till death because that is what Proctor did and it cost him his life.
3. The tone is formal and serious, he gets this across because hes talking about innocent people being executed because of the witch trials and also Proctors struggle in the plot.
4. “Let either of You breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to You in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you” , there are two literary elements in this passage. One of them is character development, here you see Abigail’s threat and it shows that she will kill to protect her dignity. The other is language, the use of words by the author for example “the edge of a word” it just adds to Abigail’s threat making her sound even more menacing.
