John Proctor, a more lovable what you might call protagonist of the book who sticks his feet in the ground and dies for his name. The Proctor you know however may just be different from the real John Proctor. The 3 differences of proctor in life and proctor in the play are his descriptive appearance, his personality, and his how much the witchery affected him and his family. From small little differences to big personality changes John Proctor has it all so buckle in as I use evidence to show you the real John Proctor.
Not every hero lives to tell his story. This is exactly what happened in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, a story focused on the Salem Witch Trials. In Spring of 1692 in the town of Salem, Massachusetts a group of teenage girls were caught by Reverend Parris, a selfish and materialistic man, dancing around a campfire in the woods during the middle of the night. In order to avoid punishment, they began to blame innocent people of witchcraft. The court was established with judges Danforth and Hathorne in charge to question the people who were accused.
In John Proctor’s argument with Reverend Hale regarding his devotion to religion, Miller uses ethos and pathos to propel the plot forward. His ethos are aimed towards revealing Parris’s lack of devotion to the church by using decorum to show how he fails to be concomitant with Hale’s archetype of a trustworthy leader. The replacement of the handmade pewter candles with the artificial golden candles symbolized how the trials encouraged religious pretense in Salem rather than sincere devotion to religion. The trials promoted the superficial/materialistic aspect of faith in Salem because people were deemed to be pious by their attendance at Church on Sabbath day rather than by their innate devoutness to religion. Similarly, Miller vilified his
1. John Proctor is a tall man. He has long brown hair and a short beard and mustache. He has a bold personality and cares about his family. He stands up for what he believes in no matter what the cost.
Salem Witch Trials, in the spring of 1692, was a time of chaos and turmoil in Salem, Massachusetts. The novel, The Crucible by Arthur Miller illustrates a series of accusations of witchcraft against many citizens of Salem. The Salem Witch Trials consisted of accusations, court hearings, prosecutions, and executions of people who were believed to have been possessed by the devil and therefore committed witchcraft. It was a time were citizens of Salem “accordingly looked on neighbors with some suspicion” and Salem was “a community riven with schisms” (Miller xiii). The Crucible’s tragic hero, John Proctor, a farmer in his mid-thirties who “was the kind of man – powerful of body, even-tempered, and not easily led – who cannot refuse support to partisans without drawing their deepest resentment” (Miller 19) is a man who experiences the trials first hand through his affair with Abigail Williams and through his marriage to Elizabeth.
Power is a very fluid thing in The Crucible. The court by extension of religion - since Salem was a theocracy - has final say, but who influences and wields the power within these institutions, and how that changes is what is worth examining. If most people in Salem had used their power differently, the town might have ended up in a much better situation. An important part of Salem is it's religious dedication.
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953), portrays the Salem witch trials and conveys how the actions of a single person can hold a high impact on its surrounding community when faced with troublesome times. When accusations of witchcraft start spreading throughout the town, mass hysteria breaks out and infects the mindset of a large quantity of Salem’s inhabitants. The problems are further accentuated by poorly run trials led on by the corrupt leaders of the community. Throughout the play, drastic decisions are made by many that further the development of the plot. John Proctor is a highly respected citizen of Salem, though he does not view himself in that same light, and is one who is faced with an array of arduous decisions time and time again.
Everyone has a name, and some are willing to die to protect it. John Proctor was willing to die to keep his name clean of what he was being accused of. Elizabeth Proctor, or Goody Proctor, knew that her husband was a good man, and she wanted to support his choices. Goody Proctor thought that if she lied about what John had done that it would save his life, but he ended it on his own terms. John and Elizabeth Proctor had three sons and a baby on the way before John went to the noose.
Protection and Its Effects A main motivation for characters’ actions in The Crucible was protection of themselves or others. There are many causes and motives for the cast of The Crucible to act as they did, but the one that stuck out to me was the need to protect and save the people of Salem, whether it be for selfish reasons or compassion for others. The focus will land on Abigail and Mercy, Parris, Mary Warren, Proctor, Elizabeth, Giles Corey, and Reverend Hale, who all share a common motive within the story, and that’s to protect someone from the events that occur. Of course, other motivations for the events in the story exist, but as a more personal push for action, it seems fitting to put more focus on protecting themselves and others.
John knows that these innocent people will die, thus he tries to save them by providing proof that Abigail cannot see witches thus, John Proctor is a
Nothing that John Proctor does is enough to erase the sin that he has committed against his wife. His guilt causes him to fake affection for Elizabeth. He is trying to relieve his guilt with words but they are nothing when Elizabeth suggests that he goes to Salem to tell the court that the girls were faking, he cannot. “If the girl’s a saint now, I think it is not the way to prove she’s a fraud” (Miller 51). John knows he will have to accuse Abigail the girl that he slept with, he knows the power that she has over him.
Two Heroes Through Time: Proctor, a Tragic Hero and his Comparison to Christ in The Crucible "The change in the hero's fortunes be not from misery to happiness, but on the contrary, from happiness to misery, and the cause of it must not lie in any depravity but in some great error on his part." - Aristotle Human nature has shown to be mostly ignorant but also shows prejudice to those who serve and bring benefit to society. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, John Proctor is a perfect example of a person who comes across as the proverbial Christ figure, someone with a whole lot of characteristics revealed throughout the play. Confronting the evil in Salem, overcoming temptation, but also being persecuted and suffering is what Proctor was known for. When John Proctor was accused of witchcraft in 1692, he knew that even though the accusations were false and that the women were not in contact with the devil, he had to admit to being a witch to save all those around him.
In this act, we see John Proctor finally redeem his good name and die a righteous man. Throughout the play, Proctor struggles with the fact that he lost the thing most important to him; his self-image. Even when he openly admitted his lecherous act of adultery to the court, he still couldn’t regain his self-confidence. Due to Abigail’s manipulative behavior and the corrupt view of the justice that court has, his confession only tainted his good name of being and honest man to the public and got himself in more trouble than he was originally in. In Act 4, Proctor’s refusal to succumb to the court’s obsessive and hypocritical view of justice and order reveals that Proctor’s sense of integrity is still alive.
Louvre curator and Priory of Sion Grand Master Jacques Saunière is fatally shot one night at the museum by an albino Catholic monk named Silas, who is working on behalf of someone he knows only as the Teacher, who wishes to discover the location of the "keystone", an item crucial to the search for the Holy Grail. After Saunière's body is discovered in the pose of the Vitruvian Man, the police summon Harvard Professor Robert Langdon, who is in town on business. Police Captain Bezu Fache tells him that he was summoned to help the police decode the cryptic message Saunière left during the final minutes of his life. The message includes a Fibonacci sequence out of order. Langdon explains to Fache that Saunière was a leading authority on the subject of goddess artwork and that the pentacle Saunière drew in his own blood represents an allusion to the goddess and not "devil worship", as Fache says.
John Proctor is a good man despite anything others may say about him. He displays three very noble qualities throughout the witch trials which are bravery, honesty, and an overall goal to save lives even to the point where he sacrificed his. While many argue John is a bad man because he committed adultery they are entirely mistaken. Just because he had one bad sin gives no right to anybody to call him a bad person when clearly the good side of him is shown more than the bad. John Proctor is a good man who displays the characteristics of a hero and could be seen as one for giving his life for his friends.
