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John Proctor Tragic Hero Essay

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Saylor Klein English 2 F-Channel April 2024. John Proctor is the protagonist of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. He lived in Salem, Massachusetts and was involved in the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. A Tragic Hero is someone that starts off as a good person and then experiences some event that is self-inflicted and that will further lead to their downfall which is the third part of a tragic hero and this is where the character usually dies or is brought to their lowest point in life. The way this applies to John Proctor is that he starts off as a well respected person in their village then had an affair with an underage girl named Abigail Williams which led to his wife getting accused which made John have to go to court to defend her which led …show more content…

I wish you had some evil in you that you might know me! A man will not cast away his good name. You surely know that.” This shows that John Proctor has a good name around the town and the commoners would be foolish to say bad things about his name. The second part of being a tragic hero is that the person has an event or terrible decision that leads to their downfall.This part is shown many times throughout the book and is one of the main reasons John Proctor loses so much dignity and respect. One of the strongest events is that he slept with an underage girl named Abigail Williams which is shown in act 1 page 1098-1099 which shows how the act that they did with each other made her gain a lustful mentality towards John. This mentality made her hate John’s wife Elizabeth and eventually led to Abigail performing “witchcraft” to kill her. Since witchcraft is a fictional act, she failed in this act and instead starts accusing everyone like Elizabeth and other people so that she could get Elizabeth hanged and be with John Proctor for the rest of their lives. The third part of being a tragic hero is that the person starts their downfall from what happened in the second part. John does this after

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When Danforth tells Proctor he has not sold his freinds, Proctor states, “Beguile me not! I displays that Proctor is a hero because he is blacken all of them when this is nailed to the church the very day they hang for silence!”(Miller, 132). This incident displays that Proctor is a hero because he is willing to incriminate himself to save his friends because of an affair he decided to have with Abigail that led to her speaking blasphemously about Witchcraft in order to become Proctor’s wife. This exhibits honesty and supportiveness, Proctor himself could’ve stayed out of the trial, but he refused to let Abigail falsely incriminate his society, so he takes a stand. John Proctor is a tragic hero because he stood for a good cause and feels remorse knowing that if he had told the court that he had an affair with Abigail earlier, they wouldn’t have killed off prominent members of their society.

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With John Proctor as our main character it is only suited that we claim him to be our one true tragic hero. He is introduced as a strong character that has secrets that few know. The reputation he has set forth for himself means a great deal to him. But, the higher you are the more the fall hurts. His fall from the graces was extremely tragic, as he proclaimed his act of adultery in front of God and everyone.

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