1. Cause and Effect in The Crucible

2. Common Core Standards:
In literature, as in life, events are often linked in cause-effect relationships.
Common Core Standards:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics.

3. EFFECT: Tituba is charged with witchcraft
CAUSE: Tituba and some of the girls in Salem have a ritual in the forest.
EFFECT: Tituba is charged with witchcraft

4. CAUSE: Reverend parris sends for reverend hale
EFFECT: serious inquiries and accusations about witchcraft begin

5. CAUSE: proctor denies abby his love.
EFFECT: abby becomes desperate in an attempt to destroy elizabeth

6. CAUSE: reverend hale pressures tituba to confess to witchcraft
EFFECT: titba names sarah good and others as witches

7. CAUSE: john proctor forgets the commandment against adultery
EFFECT: hale questions the sincerity of proctor’s commitment

8. CAUSE: giles corey says his wife reads books
EFFECT: martha corey is arrested

9. CAUSE: mary warren gives elizabeth a poppet
EFFECT: elizabeth proctor is arrested for stabbing Abigail williams

10. CAUSE: proctor presents a petition, with signatures, to danforth
EFFECT: danforth insists that all those who signed the petition will be summoned to court

11. CAUSE: mary warren testitfies against the other girls
EFFECT: the girls all scream and plot against mary in court.

12. CAUSE: elizabeth proctor lies about her husband’s infidelity
EFFECT: john proctor’s allegations against abby are discredited.

13. CAUSE: abigail fakes a vision of mary’s spirit attacking in the form of a yellow bird.
EFFECT: mary sides with the girls and accuses john proctor of witchcraft

14. CAUSE: abigail vanishes from salem with reverend parris’ money.
EFFECT: parris allows hale to minister the prisoners. He fears for his life.

15. CAUSE: giles corey refuses to confess to witchcraft
EFFECT: giles is not hanged by pressed to death; his children can inherit his property.

16. CAUSE: danforth refuses to delay the executions.
EFFECT: innocent people are executed.

17. CAUSE: john proctor tears up his confession.
EFFECT: proctor is hanged; he goes to death with dignity.