John Proctor's Decision Essay

Jake Macartney Ms. Miller Hosey English 11;Period 9 April 30, 2024.

Life is a series of choices, each with the potential to change the trajectory forever in just an instant. One decision has changed countless people's lives, just as it has affected John Proctor from The Crucible and Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby. John and Gatsby both make decisions that alter the course of their stories completely and indefinitely end their lives. Gatsby decides to take the blame for the murder of someone, for a girl he thought loved him. John Proctor decides to stay true to his word and not lie to free his name. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and in the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, one decision makes a life-altering change,

In both the book and the play, protagonists make one decision that changes the course of their lives and ultimately leads to their deaths. Both time periods significantly influenced the decisions made: “he excelled as a novelist, a short story writer, and an essayist. But because his personal and professional histories paralleled the times in which he lived and wrote”(Pendergast). Because he lived during that era, he was able to write so profoundly and accurately about the 1920s. In the play The Crucible, the time it occurs also plays a major role in the characters' personalities and day-to-day lives. “Puritans, a term that refers to several groups of Protestants from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England known for abiding by strict codes of discipline and avoiding all forms of excess”(Riggs). This was important because the town of Salem was full of Puritans; they were very strict with certain things. They were expected to go to church every Sunday unless they were very ill. Certain things were very different across different periods of time, such as now going to church is optional and nonetheless, religion is optional. The time periods affected both of the stories, but it did not affect how one decision can make a life-altering