How Miller Uses Reverend Hale in The Crucible

How Miller Uses Reverend Hale in The Crucible

Arthur Miller describes Reverend Hale as nearing forty, a

tight-skinned, eager-eyed intellectual. An intellectual is usually

thought of as someone with his head in the clouds, who spends so much

time thinking great thoughts that he's inept in the real world of

human emotions. There is some truth in this image of John Hale. He

knows a lot about witchcraft; but he knows almost nothing about the

people of Salem or the contention that is wracking the town. How

pompous and arrogant he must sound when he says, “Have no fear now--we

shall find [the Devil] out if he has come among us, and I mean to

crush him utterly if he has shown his face!” And yet he has every

reason to be confident. To Hale, demonology is an exact science, for

he has spent his whole life in the study of it. “We cannot look to

superstition in this. The Devil is precise.” But he is not just a

bookworm, he is a minister of God. His goal is light, goodness and its

preservation, and he is excited by being called upon to face what may

be a bloody fight with the Fiend himself. All his years of preparation

may now finally be put to the test. He fails, and the evil that

follows his first appearance totally overwhelms him. Is the fault in

his character? Is he not as smart as he thinks he is? Is he a fool,

whose meddling lit the fuse to the bomb that blew up the town? Much of

the play supports this answer. What looks like success at the end of

Act I soon carries Hale out of his depth, and every time he appears

after that he is less sure of himself. At the end of the play he has

been completely crushed: he, a minister of the light, has come to do

the Devil's work. “I come to counsel Christians they should be...

... middle of paper ...

...ocence. In October 1692

someone accused his wife of witchcraft and where Hale had been rather

forward in the prosecution of the supposed witches he now came to

believe that spectral evidence was not enough to convict on. He then

began to argue against the trials.

The effects of Hale’s character and action helped progressed the play

and spark off the witch trials. By his arrogance in the beginning of

Act 1 where “he feels the pride of the specialists whose unique

knowledge has at last been publicly called for. This also goes to show

that Hale has one of the tragic hero’s flaws, which is arrogance. Hale

does try to redeem himself by changing his view about witchcraft. Hale

tried to save John Proctor’s life giving him advice and reasoning him,

but to avail. Proctor was hung. Hale became the audience’s voice in

the end saying the witch trials were wrong.