John Proctor The Crucible Essay

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The Tragedy of John Proctor Being a persecuted man Arthur Miller understood the paramount importance of resisting a despotic society that is compelled to trifle the rights of individual persons for standing out as non conformists or undesired outliers from the general populace. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller effectively parallels the paranoid style of life of the early Puritan culture of 17th century of New England during the witch trials, with his own modern era of paranoia in the 20th century Red Scare. Like Miller, John Proctor, a well respected farmer and husband of 1692 Salem was a man who broke the mold of his paranoid society and challenged the powers that be. Arthur Miller had a fixation for tragic heroes as he makes perfectly clear …show more content…

When we are first introduced to him he seems to be a man incapable of forgiving himself for his lustful acts of adultery with Abigail Williams and this is made apparent by his awkwardness around Abigail and his quarrel with Elizabeth. When Elizabeth finds that John and Abigail were alone together her attitude towards him in this instant shifts, and she begins to grow distant towards him and even verbally aggressive towards him. John’s inability to forgive himself, and Elizabeth’s inability to trust her husband is representative of the flaws that do indeed haunt John Proctor as a tragic hero. Flaws do not however break a tragic hero, on the contrary Arthur Miller remarks “The flaw, or crack in the characters, is really nothing-and need be nothing, but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status.”( The Tragedy of The Common Man) The reason why John is not so quick to strike down Elizabeth for his suspicions, is because he himself recognizes his lustful sin in knowing Abigail Williams and seeks to redeem himself by doing well by his family. Only when Elizabeth becomes overbearingly berating towards John does he object to her behaviour towards him, securing his place as a self redeeming

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