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Pride In The Crucible And The Scarlet Letter

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In The Scarlet Letter the narrator says, “Be true! Be true! If you will not show the world your worst, at least show some quality that suggests to others the worst in you!” (Hawthorne, 224) This quote accurately sums up the dilemma that the characters in The Crucible by Arthur Miller and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne face. However not all pride in these two books is bad. In The Crucible, John Proctor has so much pride that not only did it cost the life of others but it also cost him his own and in The Scarlet Letter the minister, Arthur Dimmesdale’s pride also caused him to perish. On the other hand, Hester Prynne’s pride in the book made her a hero and a strong character to admired by readers.
In The Crucible, John Proctor is …show more content…

Arthur Dimmesdale from The Scarlet Letter however, set a more destructive path for himself. Although his pride did affect Hester Prynne and his daughter Pearl, It still was more about him torturing himself instead of admitting and confessing to what he did wrong and relieving himself of that guilt and pain. Instead he chose to live with the knowledge that he did all of this because he was so proud of his status in his community as the minister and didn't want to lose that respect everybody had him. The reason he didn’t tell the truth about the adultery was because of this very pride and he admits it.
But, not to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by the very constitution of their nature...guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God’s glory and man’s welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men...So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow; while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves. (Hawthorne,

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