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.
John Proctor the Wrongly Accused In The Crucible there are many people condemned and hanged for witchcraft, one of these, John Proctor, I believe to be innocent. A man with as much integrity and honesty as John Proctor, could never perform the act of witchcraft. Undoubtedly he wasn’t a perfect man but no one ever is. As we are proved time and time again, John is an honest, hardworking man; who is haunted by his past misdeeds.
A reputation is the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something. In fear of tarnishing one's reputation, individuals tends to go to extreme lengths in order to protect it. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the actions and choices of John Proctor, Reverend Samuel Parris and Abigail Williams serve to prove this to the audience. First of all, John Proctor will protect his reputation at all costs, even if it ultimately ends his life. Second, Reverend Parris will stop at nothing to keep his authority, even if he has to sacrifice his faith.
There has come a time in everyone’s life when their character was called into question, or someone accused them wrongly of something they did not do. This puts a person’s morality on the line and tests whether they will do what’s best for them or the masses. The Crucible by Arthur Miller shows the characters John Proctor, Deputy Governor Danforth, and Abigail Williams going through this same test. The play provides a narrative on how people choose to value their own reputation and honor over protecting the lives of themselves and others.
John Proctor is introduced as a married farmer who had a scandalous affair with his servant Abigail Williams. This horrible act of adultery has left him damaged and confused on how to move forward with his life. Likewise, he is haunted by his sin, Abigail serving as a constant reminder to his flawed decision. John says to Abigail, “ I will cut off my hand before I’ll ever reach for you again”(Miller 1140), which shows his resolve and the loyalty he is trying to give his wife.
John Proctor is basically the tragic hero of “The Crucible”, the reason for this is statement is because the tries to save his wife from being hanged. He cares about his children, he also has tried not to cheat on his wife Elizabeth, while she was ill. At the end of the story Proctor is hanged due of his confession of being a warlock. In the rising action of the story John Proctor is trying to avoid Abigail, he states that “But I will cut off my hand before I’ll ever reach for you again.”
John Proctor, a farmer from the Seventeenth Century town of Salem, Massachusetts, disbelieves the idea that the Devil can have any influence on the minds of the girls dancing in the woods. His belief that the children’s sickness had nothing to do with witchcraft does nothing to stop the court system from prosecuting and executing those accused of performing witchcraft. Although John Proctor provides clean-cut evidence to the court that witchcraft did not impact Abigail and her followers, the members of the court did nothing to stop the witch trials. One evening at the Proctor household, Reverend John Hale visits John and his wife, Elizabeth. He asks them a plethora of questions in an attempt to see if the Proctors could possibly have the Devil’s influence present in the house.
Even though John Proctor is conflicted throughout The Crucible, he finds peace by realizing the Elizabeth loves him, knowing his death will stop the court’s rampage, and forgiving himself for his sins. John Proctor often found himself in contention with the church and the town, however the town was beginning to disagree with all of the hangings. The officials of the court attempted to stop the spreading dissent among the townspeople by getting proctor to sign his freedom for a blackened name. He refuses and says to Elizabeth that he will, “Show honor now, show a stony heart and sink them with it” (Miller 133). He knows he will sink the trials with his actions because he is such a prominent figure in the society, as much as he is disliked,
When people are accused of a crime they didn’t commit, it often has lasting effects on them and their loved ones. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he explores the Salem Witch trials with characters that are accused of a crime they clearly didn’t commit, and are sent to their death. In a similar fashion, the five adolescents who were accused and found guilty of a heinous crime in New York City were ultimately found innocent after they served years and had eliminated a chance of restoring their youth. In the Central Park Five court case that occurred in New York City during the late 1980’s, the idea that a hero is someone valiant is proven by Antron Mccray. In the play, the Crucible by Arthur Miller, it displays that a hero is honest based on
Does your word mean anything to you? Does what you stand for as a person mean anything even when someone tries to take it away from you? A word John Proctor lived by, integrity, which stands for honest and moral. The religious background adds to more for their moral compass so they will go to heaven and not be sinful. The author of this play Therefore, to die for the truth is better than to live a lie.
The play The Crucible by Arthur Miller is based on true events of the Salem Witchcraft Trials but is changed in some parts to make it a better story. One exaggerated part of the play is a character named John Proctor, who has an affair with a girl named Abigale and is trying to stop the Salem Witchcraft Trials because he knows that the afflicted girls are false. While he is trying to stop the trials he ends up being accused and is hanged because he would not “confess” to being a witch. Some people think John Proctor is a flawed person because he made a lot of poor decisions, but he is actually an honorable person because he tried to make up for his mistakes. Some people think John Proctor is a flawed person because he had an affair with a younger girl named Abigale
The Crucible In The Crucible by Arthur Miller the villagers of Salem find themselves amidst a witch hunt where people will go to great and dark lengths to defend their reputation. John Proctor for example shows how much he cherishes his reputation when he was going to confess to witchcraft but stopped when he learned that his confession would be nailed to the door of the church, he then preached how he would not accept that being that his name would be all that is left of him in the world. “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! I lie and sign my life to lies!
For many soldiers returning home from war, the truth about what happened can be a hard and confusing thing. The book The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, and published in 1990, describes his time in the war. O’Brien struggles the whole time with differentiating his emotional memories with events that actually happened, and tries to impress upon the reader what it was actually like to be over in Vietnam. O’brien believes that war stories do not always accurately portray what war was like, and that is why story-truth can be truer than the happening-truth.
The first impressive characteristic of John Proctor is his bravery. Speaking out against the “afflicted” girls in the way he did could cause serious question of him as a person. From the court’s standpoint John could be seen as directly opposing the court, which would have him jailed, or could even have him be accused of witchcraft. Also, he would have had to have known that Abigail Williams would have immediately accused him of being a witch once he spoke out against them. However, that did not stop him from delivering the truth to the court.
Abigail does all this for the man that she loves and had an affair with, John Proctor. If the reader begins to focus on John, his actions and what he stands for, they are easily able to recognize he portrays characteristics of the flawed nature of an individual. It is shown through the fact that he had an affair, isn’t able to forgive himself, and at the end of the book, is unable to give up something dear to him to save himself and others. When analyzing John Proctor, the first thing that stands out is that he had an affair with a 17 year-old Abigail Williams. Proctor has a wife who loves him and three children but still decides to stray from his family and fancies someone else.
