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Examples Of Greed In The Crucible

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Greed is often glorified, regarded as an endless means of gaining wealth and power. Though, in reality, it’s a lack of confidence in one’s own abilities, a form of overcompensation. Greed is a trademark of the weak, yet it stands as the driving force of corruption and regression during the witch trials of the small village, Salem, Massachusetts. It’s by Arthur Miller that the idea of intense, selfish desire is used as a powerful theme personified by many of the characters in his work, the Crucible . However, it’s regularly overlooked as a material issue rather than its deeper meaning. For Abigail Williams, Thomas Putnam, and Reverend Parris, greed is a testament of what ails them at heart.
Abigail Williams, the play’s obsessively lovestruck antagonist, has the conscience a psychopath, doing whatever it takes to hold onto one thing­­ -- her brief affair with John Proctor. Abigail’s motivations for greed are often left there but when her last resort is an attempt to have Elizabeth killed for witchcraft, it reveals what’s in her heart. “I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet.” (Miller 24). She confesses that she can’t let go and it’s …show more content…
When it’s revealed that he was the first minister to try to claim the church’s house, what he’s really after seems to finally be solidified in the text. “Abigail, I have fought here three long years to bend these stiff­-necked people to me, and now, just now when some good respect is rising in the parish you compromise my character.” (Miller 11). Reverend Parris wants to make his power in Salem permanent and it’s shown through his greed for a deed and even things as small as candlesticks, anything that exhibits his superiority. In the Crucible, it is established that there are always deeper motivation than material

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