The Crucible Foreshadowing Quotes

The door opens, and his Negro slave enters. Tituba is in her forties. Parris brought her with him from Barbados, where he spent some years as a merchant before entering the ministry. She enters as one does who can no longer bear to be barred from the sight of her beloved, but she is also very frightened because her slave sense has warned her that, as always, trouble in this house eventually lands on her back.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. The theme of racism is found in these stage directions and description of Reverend Parris’s black slave from Barbados, Tituba. We are told how very frightened she is because any trouble in the house is always blamed on her. The language suggests her feelings of oppression and imprisonment, as in "can no longer bear to be barred." She represents inequality and powerlessness in a play where power and its abuse is a strong theme. Though the most socially inferior person, Tituba is an important character in the play. She is the first person to be accused of witchcraft, which is foreshadowed here. She is also the first to name other women as witches: Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn and Bridget Bishop.
Mary Warren quote in The Crucible

Abby, we’ve got to tell! Witchery’s a hangin’ error, a hangin’ like they done in Boston two years ago! We must tell the truth, Abby! You’ll only be whipped for dancin’, and the other things!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. After the girls dance in the wood and drink chicken’s blood, the Proctors’ 17-year-old servant Mary Warren fears being hanged as witchcraft rumors swirl around Salem. Confronting Abigail, she says that they should confess to dancing and accept whipping rather than go to the gallows for witchcraft. This shows the brutal and intolerant Puritan justice system in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where dancing and witchcraft were crimes punished with the utmost severity. Mary’s "we must tell the truth" cry foreshadows her confession later in the play that the girls made up stories of seeing the Devil and spirits of other people – she recants that confession when Abby pressures her.

You drank blood, Abby! You didn’t tell him that…You did, you did! You drank a charm to kill John Proctor’s wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. After Parris leaves the room, his 10-year-old daughter Betty spills the beans on Abigail. She exposes Abby’s lie that she told Parris everything the girls did in the woods. Abby left out the part where she drank chicken blood and used witchcraft to kill Elizabeth Proctor, Betty reveals. The fact that Betty, who was meant to be a coma, heard this conversation between her father and Abby, means that Betty was pretending to be in a coma. Abigail smacks Betty across the face and tells her to shut up. Abby drinking blood to put an evil spell on Elizabeth early in the play foreshadows her later plot to have Elizabeth condemned as a witch.

Proctor was a farmer in his middle thirties. He need not have been a partisan of any faction in the town, but there is evidence to suggest that he had a sharp and biting way with hypocrites. He was the kind of man – powerful of body, even-tempered, and not easily led – who cannot refuse support to partisans without drawing their deepest resentment. In Proctor’s presence a fool felt his foolishness instantly – and a Proctor is always marked for calumny therefore.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. In these character description note by Miller, protagonist John Proctor is portrayed as a man of integrity who possesses an independent mind and spirit. He didn’t support any particular group in town and didn’t suffer fools or hypocrites gladly. That made him a target of calumny, or attacks on his reputation. This passage is foreshadowing of a number of things: Proctor’s biting criticisms of the hypocritical Reverend Parris and greedy Thomas Putnam, and the accusations of witchcraft leveled against Proctor himself.

But as we shall see, the steady manner he displays does not spring from an untroubled soul. He is a sinner, a sinner not only against the moral fashion of the time, but against his own vision of decent conduct. These people had no ritual for the washing away of sins. It is another trait we inherited from them, and it has helped to discipline us as well as to breed hypocrisy among us. Proctor, respected and even feared in Salem, has come to regard himself as a kind of fraud. But no hint of this has yet appeared on the surface, and as he enters from the crowded parlor below it is a man in his prime we see, with a quiet confidence and an unexpressed, hidden force.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. This description of John Proctor’s character highlights how he is well respected in Salem. It also refers to him as a sinner, suggesting that he has done something unchristian and contrary to his own code of conduct. He has feelings of shame over this secret sin and so regards himself as "a kind of fraud" in the Puritan community. Proctor is not the perfect Christian that he appears to be and is laden down with guilt. Foreshadowed here is the revelation to come of how he deceived his wife and had an affair with 17-year-old family servant Abigail Williams.

There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. Ann Putnam uses metaphorical language to describe what she believes to be the web of hidden plots and powers manipulating the fates of people in Salem. Malevolent forces and not God’s work, she believes, are behind her losing seven babies and her daughter and Betty Parris falling ill. She earlier admitted to asking Tituba to communicate with her dead babies to find out who murdered them. Mrs. Putnam’s paranoid idea about people in league with the Devil foreshadows the mass hysteria that will grip the panicked Putitans of Salem and fuel the Salem witch trials. "Wheels within wheels" is also an allusion to what the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel said in the Book of Ezekiel. In a spectacular vision Ezekiel saw four angels, each with four wings and four faces. There were four wheels beside the angels sparkling like diamonds in the sun, each with another wheel inside it – "wheels within wheels." Ezekiel was one of the Jews exiled to Babylon after the fall of his city of Jerusalem. His vision was a sign that God had not abandoned him or his people.

Think on it now, it’s a deep thing, and dark as a pit.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. Giles Corey is talking about how people in Salem are not getting along with one another and suing their neighbors at an alarming rate. He himself confesses to being in court six times that year. Using a simile, he warns how people’s greed and hunger for vengeance are pulling them down into a black pit. This is foreshadowing of how the Salem community will be swallowed up by its own dark pit of destruction and Putitan intolerance, leading to many innocent lives being destroyed in the infamous witch trials.

REBECCA: Goody Ann! You sent a child to conjure up the dead?
MRS. PUTNAM: Let God blame me, not you, not you, Rebecca! I’ll not have you judging me any more! Is it a natural work to lose seven children before they live a day?

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. Rebecca is horrified to hear Ann Putnam confess that she sent her daughter Ruth into the woods to practice witchcraft with the slave Tituba. Mrs. Putnam admits doing this to learn who "murdered" her babies. She snaps back at Rebecca, attacking her for being judgemental and referring to her seven dead babies. The tension and conflict between these two women is palpable. This is foreshadowing of worse things to come, when Rebecca is falsely accused and executed for the "supernatural murder" of the Putnam babies. It is implied in the play that Mrs. Putnam is behind the accusations against Rebecca. Ann Putnam, married to the wealthy and powerful Thomas Putnam, is herself never punished or brought to trial for her involvement in witchcraft.

What signifies the readin’ of strange books?…It discomfits me! Last night – mark this – I tried and tried and could not say my prayers. And then she close her book and walks out of the house, and suddenly – mark this – I could pray again!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. When the hysteria over witches breaks out, Giles Corey carelessly mentions to Reverend Hale how he often wakes up and night and finds his wife secretly reading strange books. Without thinking of the consequences he complains that this somehow prevents him from saying his prayers. Unwitting Giles helps sentence his wife Martha Corey to death, since she is later executed as a witch. This passage is foreshadowing of Martha being accused of witchcraft.

Spare me! You forget nothin’ and forgive nothin’. Learn charity, woman. I have not moved from there to there without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart. I cannot speak but I am doubted, every moment judged for lies, as though I come into a court when I come into this house!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. John Proctor feels that he is being constantly judged and questioned by his wife Elizabeth over his affair with Abigail. She struggles with forgiving and trusting him. He desperately wants forgiveness and uses personification to describe her continuing coldness towards him – "an everlasting funeral marches round your heart." Whenever he arrives home, he feels like he is stepping into a courtroom and being judged for lies. This is foreshadowing of John’s court appearance in Act 3.

Somewhat mentioned. But I said I never see no sign you ever sent your spirit out to hurt no one, and seeing I do live so closely with you, they dismissed it.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. Mary Warren responds to Elizabeth, when she asks if she was accused at the witch trials. Mary assures her that she testified to her good character and the court rejected claims of witchcraft against her. But Mary’s power in the court is not as great as she thinks, certainly not enough to stop the devious Abigail having Elizabeth arrested. Mary’s warning that Elizabeth’s name was mentioned in court is foreshadowing of her arrest later in the act.

You have a faulty understanding of young girls. There is a promise made in any bed…Spoke or silent, a promise is surely made. And she may dote on it now – I am sure she does – and thinks to kill me, then to take my place.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. Elizabeth tells John that she believes their former servant Abigail has likely read more into her sexual affair with her husband that he did. John may see the affair as meaningless, but Elizabeth is acutely aware of Abigail’s jealousy and desire for vengeance because she fired Abigail over the affair. Abby plans to kill her and replace her, Elizabeth tells John. Abby’s plot and Elizabeth’s arrest for the hanging offense of witchcraft are foreshadowed here.

It is her dearest hope, John, I know it. There be a thousand names; why does she call mine? There be a certain danger in calling such a name – I am no Goody Good that sleeps in ditches, nor Osburn, drunk and half-witted. She’d dare not call out such a farmer’s wife but there be monstrous profit in it. She thinks to take my place, John.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. Elizabeth realizes that Abigail’s motives for accusing her of being a witch stem from jealousy, because Abby wants to replace her as John’s wife. Elizabeth knows that she is no vagrant like Sarah Good or drunkard like Sarah Osburn, so Abby must have a strong reason to target a farmer’s wife. Which is to be the next Mrs. Proctor when Elizabeth is executed. There is foreshadowing here, with Elizabeth’s suspicions later proving to be right when she is arrested for witchcraft and planted evidence of a doll used against her.

We burn a hot fire here; it melts down all concealment.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 3. Danforth warning to John Proctor relates to the title of the play. A crucible is a container in which metals may be melted. Danforth is using it here as a metaphor for burning away any lies and deceit in order to reveal the truth. This line is dramatic irony, because the audience knows that the court, far from getting to the truth, condemns the innocent. We also have an example of foreshadowing here, because Danforth actually does burn away Proctor’s concealment of his affair with Abigail.

I am a minister of the Lord, and I dare not take a life without there be a proof so immaculate no slightest qualm of conscience may doubt it.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 3. Having signed seventy-two death warrants in the Salem witch trials, Reverend Hale makes this comment to Danforth. The irony is that the "proof so immaculate" relied on by the court to decide guilt is the unsubstantiated word of one person against another. Hale, in agonizing over the "qualm of conscience" he feels with each case, is expressing his first real moments of doubt about what is happening in Salem. This foreshadows how the witchcraft expert will soon be full of concerns about Salem justice, believing eventually that he has "blood on my head."
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