The narrator outlines the specific grievances and disputes between characters, increasing our understanding of why they might be eager to condemn one another. When we read the text, though, the narrator and stage directions include descriptions of the characters’ interior lives, making the narration third-person omniscient.
Through their dialogue we slowly understand some of their past relationships, while in other cases we simply understand that past resentments and disagreements inform their current attitudes toward one another. In general, characters treat each other with distrust and sometimes outright resentment, though we don’t immediately understand why they are so eager to condemn one another as witches. We immediately sense some sort of past relationship between them, which is initially unclear but slowly revealed over the course of the scene. For example, John Proctor and Abigail are both flirtatious and wary of one another when they first meet in Betty’s bedroom.
We have little knowledge of characters’ past relationships with each other, and must infer their histories based upon the way they interact. Because Miller doesn’t write any soliloquies to reveal characters’ inner thoughts, the audience is only privy to the action on the stage, so their perspective is third-person limited, meaning we only have access to what the characters do and say, not what they think or feel. The point of view of The Crucible differs based on whether the play is performed or read.
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