Animal Imagery

As a nod to the savage behaviour of the citizens when they are faced with conflict or an illusion to the virgin territory of the frontier settlement of Salem, Miller uses animal imagery in many subtle ways. Abigail’s forward reference to Proctor ‘sweating like a stallion whenever I [she] come near’ (Act 1) supports the fantasy they have of one another that is anchored with an unbridled lust. Proctor confirms this by naming Abby a ‘wild thing’ (Act 1), setting her apart from the other Puritan women who are tame and compliant to the regulations set upon them.

The many animal metaphors allow Miller to foreshadow the events yet to come; a reference within the stage notes to the simmering rabbit stew that is cooking in the Proctor household when John enters the scene helps to build the tension between the two as they converse haltingly with one another. Although John seasons the stew without Elizabeth knowing, he later lies to her saying it is ‘well-seasoned’ (Act 2), his inability to be honest with her expanding past his affair with Abigail. By contrast, Elizabeth’s statement that an animal came into the house and sat in the corner ‘like she come to visit’ (Act 2) may be an allusion to the trap that is later set by the Abby when she plants a poppet in the Proctor household, sitting on a lone shelf hiding the needle in its belly.

Consistent references to the townsfolk as being livestock are used to both reduce the citizens to a base state whilst also reminding readers of the untamed civilisation that Salem has settled in. The culmination of these references occur in the final act, when Cheever notes that since so many of the townsfolk have either been hung or await their execution in the prison, there are ‘cows wanderin’ the highroads’ (Act 4) unclaimed and untethered, hinting that in their efforts to maintain civility in their village, the citizens have become more savage then ever.

Animal Imagery Quotes

‘In – in what time? In what place?’
‘In the proper place – where my beasts are bedded.’ (Danforth questioning Proctor on his affair with Abby) Act 3

‘And yet you’ve not confessed till now. That speak goodness in you.’
‘Spite only keeps me silent. It is hard to give a lie to dogs.’ (Proctor and Elizabeth discuss his potential confession) Act 4

The Poppet

In Act 3, Elizabeth Proctor is arrested and seized on the spot when officials of the court search the house looking for a poppet. Abby had shown up, hours earlier, stabbed in the belly by a needle and exclaimed that Elizabeth’s spirit had inserted it, by the use of some otherworldly magic. Elizabeth denies owning a poppet and says she has not kept one since she was a child, but the officials find one that Mary Warren has given her as a gift. On closer inspection, they find a needle sticking into it, which Abby had snuck into it in order to frame Elizabeth.

The poppet, or doll is a child’s plaything and the use of it in convicting someone of witchcraft symbolises the loss of innocence. The group of girls, young and overwhelmed by the power that they have gained, lose their childish innocence as they condemn innocent people to hang.

The Poppet Quote

‘The girl, the Williams girl, Abigail Williams, sir. She sat to dinner in Reverend Parris’s house tonight, and without word nor warnin’ she falls to the floor. Like a struck beast, he says, and screamed a scream that a bull would weep to hear. And he goes to save her, and, stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, he draw a needle out. And demandin’ of her how she come to be so stabbed, she – testify it were your wife’s familiar spirit pushed it in.’ (Cheever when he comes to arrest Elizabeth) Act 3

Colour

Miller’s subtle use of colour throughout the play is hard to detect in an on-stage performance, but the composition of his masterpiece sees the representation of colour reliably resurface throughout the four Acts.

The oppositional black and white represent the cliché of good and evil, with Danforth questioning Proctor if he ‘keeps that black allegiance’ (Act 3) to which he replies that those that accuse people that they know to be innocent have ‘black hearts’ (Act 3). In the same way, before he pens his false confession, Proctor is asked to ‘prove the whiteness’ (Act 4) of his soul or forever be expelled from the Christian country, by execution. There is however, a subtler message seen by examining the racial undercurrent present in the first Act. Given Tituba’s dark skin, she becomes an immediate target as they suspect her savage ways have led the girls to witchcraft – ‘I saw Tituba waving her arms over the fire when I came on you [Abby and the girls]… I heard a screeching and gibberish coming from her mouth. She were swaying like a dumb beast over the fire’ (Parris, Act 1). It is after this mention of the only black character in the play that Parris questions Abby whether her name is ‘entirely white’ (Act 1) in the village to which she makes a concerted effort to defend the reason she was dismissed from the Proctor household being that she ‘will [would] not blacken my [her] face for any of them’ (Act 1) and become a slave under Goody Proctor’s service.

As well as being synonymous with blood, the colour red is used by Miller in the play to convey the broader idea of danger, sex and violence. The ‘blush’ felt between Abby and Proctor in Act 1 and 2 respectively is used as a reminder that they once shared a bond of an incredibly intimate nature. Abby must defend herself when Parris asks the nature of her dismissal, saying ‘there be no blush about my name’ (Act 1) and Elizabeth reminds John that Abby ‘sees another meaning in that blush’ (Act 2) that he confesses to suffering when he considers his previous sins with the young girl.

Abby’s threats to the girls that she is able to exact revenge on them should they admit to what truly happened in the forest marks her as a terrible danger to them all. The ‘reddish work’ (Act 1) she has experienced as a frontier child, of her parents being killed means she has it in her to exact a ‘pointy reckoning’ (Act 1) and secures not only their silence but also their conformity for the remainder of the play.

Colour Quotes

‘And mark this! Let either of you breath a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you… I saw Indians smash my dear parents heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night…’ (Abby threatens the girls to stay quiet) Act 1

‘I blacken all of them [Proctor’s friends] when this is nailed to the church the very day they hang for silence!’ (Proctor refuses to allow them to hang his false confession on display) Act 4