Act II "Write about a time when you or someone you know was judged unfairly."

I met one of my best friends freshman year. She was from River Vale and I was from Hillsdale, so she was someone I never met. We both did theatre but I didn’t perceive her as the person I thought she was. Truthfully—and she knows this—I thought she was one of those “too-cool-to-hang-out-with-freshman” girls because she always caught the attention of the upperclassmen. Then, as I got to know her, I realized this wasn’t the truth, and we have been close ever since, because of the fact that I let my judgment down. This relates to The Crucible because at the end of Act II, Mary Warren blamed Abigail for getting Elizabeth charged with witchcraft. Because of the doll that was planted by Abigail, Elizabeth was unfairly judged and the authorities would not listen to her side of the story—or Mary Warren’s at that fact. Everyone has listened to “innocent” Abigail’s claims, while judging the rest of the town unfairly.

Act I: "A time when you were among a group of people who had trouble getting along. . . what were the underlying problems or motivations among them?"

In seventh grade, I was friends with a group of about eight girls who were all different in our own ways. I had my own things going on, they had theirs. All of the sudden, it seemed, that we all just stopped getting along. It wasn’t a coincidence; I do believe that there were a lot of underlying problems—your typical middle school drama. There was one friend who didn’t want to be friends with another girl because they both “liked” the same boy and tried to get his attention desperately! Another friend had a problem with someone else because she wasn’t invited to sit at the table with her friend at her Bat Mitzvah. Some of my friends danced, and at different studios, and there would always be the recital invitation drama, which I, the non-dancer, always had to be the settler. These “problems” and “motivations” were petty looking back on them, but they destroyed friendships and truly showed everyone in my friends group’s true colors. This, however can be heavily compared to the way characters act in the end of Act I of The Crucible, when Putnam and Proctor disagree about their land, which results in their power and influence in the town. Tituba wanted to take the blame off of her, when accused of doing witchcraft in the play, so she blames the most vulnerable people in the village that people easily could blame because of their actions. In a group of people, there can always be underlying problems.