Self Preservation Of Reverend John Hale In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

The basic human instinct of self preservation serves as protection from harm or death as it provides a strong incentive to protect one's life at all cost. This is due to the primitive instinct of continuing one’s bloodline. Although many allow self preservation to control their morals and beliefs, there are the few that do not. Some even consider self preservation impossible to override when the truth is on the contrary. This is clearly shown in The Crucible by Arthur Miller when Reverend John Hale is invited to come to Salem to cleanse the town of witches. He is well known to be a great witch hunter who would only condemn those who had the uttermost evidence against them. Although polite and collected, Hale withholds his morals with a hidden

He is introduced to Salem as a brilliant and smart Reverend who has learned much about the signs of witchery due to experience in which he is described to “[pass] a hundred rumors that make him smile at the ignorance of the yeomanry...allied with the best minds of Europe...goal is light, goodness, and its preservation...knows the exaltation of the blessed whose intelligence sharpened by minute examinations of enormous tracts” (Act 1; 36) Hale is quite confident in his abilities to find witchcraft and knows the power of intelligence. When “a hundred rumors” make Hale smile, it is because he knows them to be false. Hale understands the common vendettas disguised as accusations of witchcraft. The “yeomanry” were a body of small landed proprietors of the middle class. Hale deems them to be ignorant

With John in despair over what he believes to be injustice, Hale tries to reason with him later saying, “The jails are packed-our greatest judges sit in Salem now-and hangin promised...we must look to cause proportionate. Think on cause...and let you help me to discover it. There is your only way, when such confusion strikes upon the world...let you counsel among yourselves; think on your village and what may have drawn from heaven such thundering wrath upon you all. I shall pray God open up our eyes.” (Act 2; 79) Hale understands that the hangings are inevitable and the only way to stop them is to convince others to use logic. His use of words such as “strikes” and “thundering” connotes a storm. A storm is usually accompanied by dark clouds which he believes the people of Salem to be clouded. This is alternate to who Hale is, a Reverend. A man of God, who connotes light and rays of sunlight, Hale wants to “open up” the clouds through the use of “think[ing] on cause”. Hale knows that the judges feel pressured to hang the accused as that is what the people want. The satisfaction of cleansing Salem. Hale grasps the danger of the situation believing the witch hunt to be an emotionally driven vendetta against the