Reverend John Hale's amazing change of his point of view can be related to that of someone with a bad drug addiction who finally frees themselves from the darkness of their addiction. In Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, Rev. Hale undergoes changes throughout the play due to the ridiculous trials of witches in Salem, Massachusetts. These changes consist of his belief in who is a witch, the people he believes and trusts in Salem, and the outcome of the trials themselves.
At the beginning of the play Rev. Hale is supposedly the "expert" on witches. The narrator describes Hale as, "nearing forty, a tight skinned, eager eyed intellectual. This is a beloved errand for him; on being called here to ascertain witchcraft he felt the pride of the specialist whose unique knowledge has at last been publicly called for. Like almost all men of learning, he spent a good deal of his time pondering the invisible world, especially since he had himself encountered a witch in his parish not long before."(Miller 475). The city of Salem at this time thought that Hale would "cleanse" Salem of the Devil when truly Hale realizes that the way the trials were run could have been easily
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The first time Hale truly Stands up for Proctor is when hale says," But it does not follow that everyone accused is part of it."(Miller 513). He says this to Danforth about all the people accused and how some may be working with the Devil but that doesn’t mean all of them are. Hale now truly believes that the whole trial is a scam. At last Hale has realized what he has got himself into and now does everything in his power to stop it. Hale says at the end of act 3," I denounce these proceedings, I quit this court."(Miller 525) giving Hale his final conclusion of his thoughts on these Salem witch trials. Hale knows it's only bound to get