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How Does Hale Change Throughout The Play

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Reverend Hale’s character changes quite dramatically throughout the course of the play. The minister begins as a very book-savvy man, who looks to his books for the answers on how to extinguish the Devil from Salem. Within the numerous books Rev. Hale first presents to the others as they try to wake Betty, “the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises” and holds no power against that of a well-educated minister (37). This displays his faith in the books interpreted from God by mortal mouths, demonstrating how in the beginning of the play, Rev. Hale relies on mortal powers to reveal the truth that God already possesses. Furthermore, towards the start of the play, Hale possesses much suspicion towards John Proctor as he learns of his …show more content…

Hale as he confesses his affair with Abigail Williams. Though Goody Proctor lies to Danforth about why they fired Abby, Hale now understands “it is a natural lie to tell” to protect her husband and despite it not being his place to have an opinion on the subject, he openly recognizes the “private vengeance [] working through [the] testimony” under the control of Abby and the other young women (105). This point of revelation that Rev. Hale has is the turning point for him in the rest of the play. After this point he recognizes the corruption that has settled into the court and religious logic of the court system. Hale even goes as far as encouraging the accused to give a false confession because “God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride” and he cannot bear to see another innocent life be thrown away at the cost of staying faithful to a religion run by corrupt individuals and practices (122). Considering a priest urges his followers to sin and lie to the court shows how desperate Hale is to now save as many good, innocent people as he can while he can. By the end of the play he feels responsible for the deaths that had occurred and would continue to occur but he resists the dishonorable court system as much as he can at this point in time, knowing the ill-fated truth of the reality of the scenario. In brief, Reverend Hale changes from a strictly black-and-white minister of the church to a preacher whose suspicion of the courts religious motives causes him to distant himself from his initial beliefs of the

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