Living in a society where motivations are what infuences our day-to-day actions, it shows the importance of an individual’s motivations to how they react to situations. The Crucible, an allegorical play by Arthur Miller, delves into how motivations influences how an individual reacts to the situation they are faced with. In the play, we are shown how multiple characters’ motivations influenced their actions. Parris, one of the characters in the play, is portrayed as someone who would do anything in order to keep his name clear of any allegation. While other characters could not bare the guilt of doing anything horrible to clear their names. Therefore, individual’s reactions, when faced with certain situations, are different. An individual’s …show more content…
At the start, John Proctor, a local farmer and Elizabeth’s husband, was said to have had an affair with Abigail, which he and Elizabeth had argued about many times. On act two, When his wife was accused of witchery, he fought back and defended his wife as he knows that Elizabeth never took part with any witchcraft. When Elizabeth was taken by the authorities, Proctor already planned to go to court to fight for Elizabeth’s case of accusations. He tells Mary Warren that they will be going to court and she will go to court with him and explain that the doll came from her and that it wasn’t Elizabeth’s fault. Mary then tells Proctor that she can’t do that because Abigail kill her and that Abigail would charge Proctor with lechery. Even hearing that Abigail might charge him with lechery, he says that he would use it for his advantage as it would also make her “saintliness” go away: “Abby’ll charge lechery on you, Mr. Proctor! [...] Good. Then her saintliness is done with” (II, 76). In the end of the play, Proctor was asked to confess with his “sins”, despite knowing that lying would allow him to become free, he was faced with guilt. As he was confessing the truth, he was asked to sign a paper that will be posted on the front door of the church, he takes it away from Danforth and crampled it. He didn’t want the other people who were close to him to be accused, so he didn’t want to sign the paper. Hence, we can infer how Proctors motivation of saving his wife and keeping his “purity”, he acted in ways that he didn’t do anything evil but soon after led to his