As Garrison Keillor, a poet and writer, once stated,”Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.” John Proctor, a character from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, could probably relate to this very sentiment. Throughout his play, Miller explores what it means to truly earn forgiveness through John Proctor and Elizabeth Proctor’s marriage. Both characters learn important lessons about forgiveness, but John Proctor learns that in order to be forgiven it is important to earn back the trust that has been lost, it is important to be patient in order to earn trust, and finally it is important to show that he is going to the extreme of even destroying his reputation to be forgiven by Elizabeth for what wrong he has caused. Throughout the book, Proctor does things to try and show Elizabeth how much he is really trying to do what’s right. …show more content…
But I will cut off my hand before I’ll ever reach for you again. Wipe it out of mind. We never touched, Abby.” Proctor is trying to show Abby that he’s married to Elizabeth. Proctor is telling Abby that ”I may think of you from time to time” meaning that he thinks of her in sexually but he would ”cut off my hand before I’ll ever reach for you” showing that he would suffer the pain rather than touch her at all. He is trying to tell Abby that she is nothing to him and he doesn’t want anything to with her involved with him. This conflict Elizabeth found out about and was very frustrated at Proctor because she thought that he actually had something with Abby. That is the reason why he is trying to earn her trust