rtly afterwards, his daughter Betty falls ill, she saw Abigail drink blood in the woods as part of a curse to kill Goody Proctor, suspicion is aroused and talks of witchcraft begin... Abby decides it would be fun to play along; she denounces many women as having ties with the Devil. "The "evil" in the play focuses on Abigail as the fountain head, even though she is not its most chilling expression. It's not her actions that condemn her...rather; it's the means she uses to pursue her ends. She is willing to sacrifice the community and everyone in it, to subvert the function of the Law, in order to gain her objectives. Her wickedness, then, amounts to a shrewd use of the hypocrisy, greed and spite that thrive in her neighbors under the pretext of seeing justice done. Her power arises from her ability to convert her psychic energies and the willful pursuit of her own objectives into a genuine visionary hysteria. At bottom Abby knows that her prophetic fit is self-induced, that the witchcraft she denounces is non-existent; but once the fit is on her, she can produce a convincing performance and induce the same kind of hysteria in the children. Her real diabolism is her misuse of the sacrosanct office of witness to gain her own ends..." (Bloom, Modern Critical Interpretations: Arthur Miller's The Crucible 43).The central character of ALL MY SONS, Joe, is a small businessman who during the war sends out defective airplane parts which he hopes will not be used in actual combat. However, he will not recall knowledge of these parts for fear his army contracts would be canceled and his business and his family ruined as a result. The play presents the gradual disclosure of these facts to the businessman's younger son, Chris, a former army officer. The revelation brings with it a realization that twenty-one boys were killed as a consequence of the use of the defective material. Joe Keller is now forced to accept the personal guilt that ...
