Character List

Reverend Parris

• Mid forties
• Paranoid
• "He believed he was being persecuted wherever he went, despite his best efforts to win people and God to his side" (3).
• Somewhat arrogant
• "He felt insulted if someone rose to shut the door without first asking permission" (3).
• Strives to gain respect from the people of the town
  “Parris: Abigail, I have fought here three long years to bend these stiff-necked people to me, and now, just now when some good respect is rising for me in the parish, you compromise my very character” (11).
• Preaches only hellfire and damnation, hardly ever mentions God
• Graduate of Harvard

Betty Parris

• 10 years old
• Daughter of Reverend Parris
• Inert
  “Abigail: We did dance, uncle, and when you leaped out of the bush so suddenly, Betty was frightened and then she fainted. And there’s the whole of it” (10).
• Cannot bear to hear the Lord’s name

Martha Corey

• said to be a witch
• "laid herself down on his chest and 'nearly suffocated him'"(7)
• wife of Giles Corey

Tituba

• Reverend Paris’ Negro slave
• Brought from Barbados
• Feels as though trouble always lands on her back
• Waves her arms over a fire and screeches gibberish
  “Mrs. Putnam: Tituba knows how to speak to the dead, Mr. Parris” (15).
• Admits to seeing and dancing with the Devil

Abigail

• 17 years old
• Parris’ niece
• Was discharged from Goody Proctor’s service
• Drank blood in the forest
• Drank a charm to kill Elizabeth Proctor (John Proctor’s wife)
• Has slept with John Proctor
• Says Tituba forces her to drink blood and conjure spirits

Mrs. Ann Putnam

• Forty-five year old death ridden woman
• Accuses Abigail of being a witch
  “Mrs. Putnam: How high did she fly, how high?” (13)
• Believes her 7 children were murdered through witchcraft
• “accused Rebecca’s spirit of ‘tempting her to iniquity,’ a charge that had more truth in it than Mrs. Putnam could know” (26)

Mr. Thomas Putnam

• Believes there are witches murdering people
  “Putnam: There is a murdering witch among us, bound to keep herself in the dark” (16).

Mercy Lewis

• The Putnams’ servant, 18 years old
• Ran naked through the forest

Mary Warren

• 17 year old lonely girl
• Proctor’s servant
• Scared and wants to tell the town the truth
  “Mary Warren: Abby, we’ve got to tell. Witchery’s a hangin’ error, a hangin’ like they done in Boston to years ago! We must tell the truth, Abby!”

John Proctor

• “He is a sinner, a sinner not only against the moral fashion of the time, but against his own vision of decent conduct” (20).
• “has come to regard himself as a kind of fraud” (21).
• Cheated on his wife Elizabeth with Abigail
  Admits that he wants to join the party opposite of Parris’

Rebecca Nurse

• 72 years old, white haired
• Stands over Betty until she quiets down

Giles Corey

• 83 years old
• On Parris’ side
  “Giles: I never thought you had so much iron in you (31).

Reverend John Hale

• Nearing his 40s, minister of Beverley
• “spent a good deal of his time pondering the invisible world, especially since he had himself encountered a witch in his parish” (33)
• Is called to heal Betty from whatever ‘ails’ her

Francis Nurse

• Rebecca Nurse's husband

Ezekiel Cheever

• comes to the Proctor house to search it for any Devilish things
• has a warrant to take Elizabeth as a witch

Herrick

• early thirties
• shame faced when he enters the Proctor house