Examples Of Greed In The Crucible

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Greed can be defined as “an intense desire for something, especially wealth, power or food.” Like Christopher Columbus and Abigail Williams from The Crucible, Americans are fueled by greed, and they will stop at nothing to gain the item of desire. Greed has been a part of American culture for as long as we can recall. In Letters from Columbus, Columbus came to the Cuban islands and started taking everything unquestionably. Not only did he take the inhabitants out of their homes to work for him, he claimed the island itself for his own. In The Crucible, Abigail Williams threw her friends’ names in the dirt so that she would not be blamed for her own actions, and not to mention she tried to break up a marriage. In An Interesting Narrative of …show more content…
Abigail is greedy for something...and that is John Proctor. In this passage, Abigail is attempting to cause doubt in John’s mind about Elizabeth’s morals and character. However, John is not the only thing Abigail Williams is greedy for. When she is accused of being a witch, her first instinct is to blame the other girls so that the blame will leave her back. She makes up a story about the night in the forest for all the girls to go along with, but she makes sure that her story does not include the inappropriate events that she may or may not have taken part in that night. In The Crucible, she says this; ABIGAIL: Now look you. All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sisters. And that is all. And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.
As you can see, Abigail was so dead set about not catching the blame, that she resorted to threatening the girls with violence if they told a soul what ACTUALLY happened that night. She did not care if the other girls were accused of being witches, as long as SHE did not become accused. Believe it or not, Abigail Williams is not the only one who is careless about the wellbeing of …show more content…
In Equiano, Equiano says this; “I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo.” Equiano says that he would rather go back to his previous slavery experience rather than the current situation he was in now. This is a perfect example of Americans not caring what they must do or who they must hurt to receive what is wanted. The situation that the Americans put Equiano and the others in was so horrific that he would rather go back to his previous slavery experience? It puts it into perspective how awful they must have been treated. Again, in Equiano, Equiano says “We were conducted immediately to the merchant’s yard, where we were all pent up together like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sex or age.” This proves that the Americans were so hungry for workers that they did not care about the emotions or feelings of other human beings. The slaves were literally treated like ANIMALS. Americans completely disregarded the fact that these people were not property, or to be sold like a sack of potatoes.
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