Thursday, December 24, 2015

Who should be indicted for a crime in The Crucible? Use pathos, ethos and logos to explain.

Abigail should be indicted for a crime because her actions
were instrumental in stirring the ashes of chaos into a conflagration. Using pathos, or
emotional pursuits, to explain why Abigail should be indicted, one must look at the
fallout from her actions.  People died.  People who were good, like Rebecca Nurse, were
put to death for no other reason than the hysteria that was the result of Abigail's
selfishness.  Abigail wanted to cover up her actions, along with those of the other
girls who went into the woods that fateful night that Reverend Hale encounterd the girls
and Tituba dancing around.  Abigail found that the cry of "Witch!" directed at Tituba in
Act 1 directed people's attentions away from her and her actions.  As soon as Rev. Hale
begins to accuse Abigail of hiding something, of leading the other girls in their
actions in the forext, Tituba enters the scene and Abigail finds a scapegoat.  It is
completely unethical (ethos) of Abigail to do this.  She is acting purely out of
selfishness.  Furthermore, Abigail accuses many other people of witchery, including her
rival for John Putnam's affections, his wife, Elizabeth.  Abigail does not believe that
Elizabeth is guilty, she merely wants Elizabeth out of the picture so Abigail can have a
better chance of getting John.  Also, Abigail threatens the other girls to get them to
do as she wishes.  When Mary tells the court that she and the other girls were lying
about being pestered by witches and Abigail points the finger at Mary, Mary changes her
testitmony and sides with Abigail again, (Act 3).  Finally, logos, or logic, shows that
Abigail should be indicted because her actions led directly to the deaths of others. 
Logically, Abigail is guilty of murder, even though she did not commit the physical act
of killing, her words as accusations, caused people to be sentenced to death as
witches.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Can (sec x - cosec x) / (tan x - cot x) be simplified further?

Given the expression ( sec x - csec x ) / (tan x - cot x) We need to simplify. We will use trigonometric identities ...