In the play, when the girls of Salem were caught dancing in the woods and two of the girls would not wake up, it caused people in the town to believe that the devil has possessed the girls. ... McCarthy is the modern Abigail Williams. ... As Proctor said it, "She thinks to dance with me on my wife's grave." ...
Earlier, Parris had heard a commotion in the forest and discovered his niece, Abigail, and her friends: Betty, Mary Warren, and Mercy Lewis, and Tituba, his Caribbean slave, swaying and dancing in the forest to Tituba's Barbados songs. ... Parris shares that he saw a kettle in the grass in which the girls danced; Abigail dismisses it as soup, but Parris is still afflicted by hysteria, and fearfully tells that he believes he saw some movement in the soup! ... Miller points out that in his modern crisis "Nobody but a fanatic, it seemed, could really say all that he believed....
The society and the culture of the Puritan age were extremely different from modern society. ... We danced. ... In the chastening of the Puritans, in order to maintain a clean lifestyle there were numerous restrictions such as dancing and alcohol. ...
When Abigail accused Elizabeth Proctor it was obvious to John that Abigail was trying to " dance with him on his wife's grave"(Miller 110). ... If the people in this world cannot learn to control their greedy desires it will end up like a modern day Salem. ...
(Klaits, 19) But whether witchcraft existed or not, the concept of it dominated the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era. ... (Klaits, 59) It was believed that women danced around naked, ate babies, had huge orgies, had sex with the devil, and then had his incubus child. ...
Some modern versions cast the story as something that has to do with intolerance of difference, that the accused were really just oddballs that the community tacitly approved getting rid of, but most of the people who were accused, convicted and executed in Salem were remarkable by their very devotion to community norms. ... Parris from then on denies the true story and only admits that the girls were dancing. ...
