In what kind of community does Arthur Miller root John Proctor?
In Arthur Millers Salem the community is very religious and pious.
They might be religious but their actions are bad. The community is a
puritan community this means that they are keen on helping the church
or making it better. The community is lead by the church so it is a
theocracy. Only by one example you can see how religious the community
is because the church leads it. The community is scared of other
people coming and changing the whole way of their lives so they want
to keep their way to themselves. In Arthur Millers Salem, Salem
society is very repressive in other word it is controlled and strict.
They want it strict so they can keep the community from falling to
pieces.
The society of Arthur Millers Salem is very strict and severe. For
instance when Abigail and the other teenage girls were caught in the
forest dancing by Parris. When Abigail was at home with Parris.
Abigail says to Parris in Act 1 Page 7
"I think you best go down and deny it yourself."
Parris replies back by saying
"My daughter and my niece I discovered dancing like heathen in the
forest?"
You can see here now that Parris is calling Abigail heathen who means
non-Christian. Parris is calling Abigail non-Christian only for
dancing.
It is so severe that Abigail said on Act 1 Page 7
"Uncle, we did dance: let you tell them I confessed it-and
I'll be whipped if I must be.
Then Mary says on Act 1 Page 14
"Abby we've got to tell. Witchery's an hanging error…you'll only be
whipped for dancing and other things we must tell the truth."
You only can see by this how strict and severe the community is, if
you dace you get whipped sixty times. You can see the society is
strict and only by the few examples I have given. They gave severe
punishment to anyone who broke their rules.
The beliefs of the people are strong and they stand up for their
beliefs. Because the existence of witches etc are mentioned in the
Bible. Proctor says in Act 2 Page 57
"I have no knowledge of it: the Bible speaks of witches and I
Will not deny them."
Proctor is saying that he does not know if witches exist, because the
Bible mentions witches so he has full belief in them. All of the
community is religious and they will have total belief in the Bible.
They are very quick to call each other witches or that some one is
bewitched.
The Crucible (Argumentative Essay) Is John Proctor a good man? John Proctor, in my opinion, is indeed considered a good man. And the reason why I say this is to inform you that in The Crucible, John faces a lot of conflicts with his wife, the church, and his individuality. The way John Proctor deals with these conflicts defines him as a true good man character, for example Elizabeth (Proctor’s Wife) always knew he was a good man in heart. She would have the courage to stand by Proctor’s side when they were in court “I do not judge you”.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller is set in Salem in a Puritan community. John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, Reverend Hale, Reverend Paris, and Abigail are the main characters. The book is about witchcraft or what the town thinks is witchcraft. John Proctor is the tragic hero because he is loving, loyal, authoritative, but his tragic flaw is his temper.
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as a protest paper to the brutality of the Red Scare .The Red Scare was the inoperable fear of Communism within the United States. This scare was caused as a result of the Cold War in the 1950’s. During the Cold War the US was scared of an attack of the Soviets, and the Soviets were equally as scared of an attack upon them by us. Joseph McCarthy, a Senator from Wisconsin, saw this fear as an opportunity to rise to power. McCarthy had many supporters that were primarily Republicans, Catholics, Conservative Protestants, and Blue-collar workers. McCarthy ruthlessly utilized scare tactics to get people to believe and follow him blindly into his accusations as to innocent citizens supporting Communism and either having them jailed or killed by providing phony evidence. Arthur Miller was not intimidated by this he wrote the Crucible as “an act of desperation” (Miller). This desperation was to counteract the lack of speaking out about personal beliefs during the Red Scare for the fear of breaking the law. In The Crucible, Miller wrote about a character named John Proctor who is very similar to Miller himself. Both the author and the character had to overturn the same personal paralyzing guilt, not speaking out soon enough. Nonetheless, their eventual overcoming of this guilt leads them to becoming the most forthright voice against the madness around them.
I think Proctor is to be admired for the way in which he handles this
John Proctor: “God in heaven, what is John Proctor, what is John Proctor”. John is a man of strong moral beliefs, concerned only for the safety of his family and personal welfare. He cares of nothing for the beliefs of any of the other people in the town and what his supervisor which is the Reverend, thinks either. After trying to avoid involvement in the witch trials he is later prosecuted for witchery and sentenced to hang. John trys to avoid any involvement in the Salem witch trials. His reason for doing so is to protect his image because he is afraid he will be committed of adultery with Abigail Williams. Following these events he trys to save everyone’s lives by admitting to this horrible offense adultery and ends up losing the trial along with his life. He did have a chance to live but instead of signing away his name and his soul to keep his life, he wanted to die honorably with his friends not without a name, a soul, and with guilt. “John Proctors decision to die is reasonable and believable”. Reverend Parris, the Salem minister and Proctors immediate supervisor, which says “ there is either obedience or the church will burn like hell is burning.” “The church in theocratic Salem is identical with the state and the community and will surely crumble if unquestioning obedience falters in the least.” Proctor, on the other hand, “has come to regard his self as a king of fraud,” as long as he remains obedient to an authority which he cannot respect.
A tragic hero is a noble man who commits a fatal flaw. The hero’s downfall is a result of their choices which leads to a punishment that exceeds the crime. “The difference between Proctor and Willy Loman is enormous; the former is the rather typical tragic hero who is defiant to the end, the latter is trapped in submission and is living a lie” (McGill 4). John Proctor is one of the main characters in The Crucible. he is married to Elizabeth Proctor and they live in Salem. In Arthur Miller’s famous play, The Crucible, John Proctor represents a classic tragic hero because he is a well respected man of noble stature, he is conflicted because of his fatal flaw, and his downfall is a result of his own choices.
There are many sides to John Proctor and they occur at different stages of the play, John is a complex character and is very well respected even though he has done wrong things. Arthur Miller was in the same situation as John Proctor in 1956-57 because he refused to give names of people he saw at communist meetings. There was the same trial system. If you confessed you would stay alive assuming you had turned from the communist meetings, however if you denied that you were seen at communist meeting you would have been hanged because there would be no evidence to show you weren’t there. You get the impression that the character of John Proctor was based on the real life character of Miller.
Arthur Miller’s "The Crucible" illustrates a powerful drama based on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. A very strict theocracy rules Salem; a place where the bible is law and anyone who does follow the rules to the letter, must have dealings with the devil. The accusations of witchcraft in Salem start off by a group of girls who were caught dancing in the woods. Dancing is forbidden and out of fear of being punished or even accused themselves of witchcraft, the girls begin to accuse others for having been seen with the devil. In an attempt to prove that they were lying John Proctor sacrifices his own life to protect others. (LEAD IN SENTENCE). John Proctor portrays the classic tragic hero, in where his tragic error and overcoming of evil, becomes the cause of his untimely death.
The Crucible – John Proctor the Tragic Hero What is a tragic hero? The most well known definition of a tragic hero comes from the great philosopher, Aristotle. When depicting a tragic hero, Aristotle states "The change in the hero's fortunes be not from misery to happiness, but on the contrary, from happiness to misery, and the cause of it must not lie in any depravity but in some great error on his part." In addition, he explains the four essential qualities that a tragic hero should possess, which are goodness, appropriateness, lifelike, and consistency. All of these necessities help to classify the character of John Proctor in Arthur Miller's The Crucible as the tragic hero of the play.
John Proctor is a quiet man who has a secret that will turn into his downfall. Even though he has a family and owns a farm on the outskirts of town, he fails to keep his morals straight and eventually falls victim to his own lust. Because of the lust between John and Abigail, she starts a witch-hunt so hopefully she can have John all to herself, and get herself out of trouble. The hunt causes John to forget his pride and sacrifice himself for his family and his friends. By doing so he shows the whole village of Salem what it means to be a Puritan. In the play “The Crucible,” a victim of contradictory emotions, who fights for what is right and becomes a hero for the village of Salem, is a farmer, John Proctor.
In the play the Crucible, by Arthur Miller, John Proctor is seen as a tragic hero because of his tragic fate and his sacrifice to his family. The play takes place in the town of Salem Massachusetts in 1692 during the times of the Salem witch trials. Many of the townspeople were being accused but one family inpeticular named the Proctors were at the epicenter of the accusations. The proctors were being accused by Abigail Williams, which eventually led to the death and hanging of John Proctor. John Proctor is seen as a tragic hero because he had a tragic flaw, which was a lust for sex, which lead to an affair with Abigail, he had free choice of whether or not he was going to be hanged but admitted he was a witch, because he does not want to hurt his family, and John Proctor had increased awareness in the story because he realizes what is wrong in town and makes a statement of trying to stop it by accepting the punishments.
In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, various characters, whether it is from physical trials or unseen personal struggles, experience some kind of major conflict. There are those who spend every day in fear, wondering whether or not they will be falsely accused of witchcraft. There are others who struggle with more internal trials, such as forgiving those who have hurt them. The protagonist, John Proctor, was a man of strong moral constitution, and held himself to a high standard for the sake of his good name and family. As a result of this, he struggled with a major internal conflict throughout the play.
In the book The Crucible there is a struggle within to have one have a sense of belonging to society. They want to be loved by that society no matter how much they may seem that they don’t belong. But they do want to show that to everyone, everyone that may not think that.
In the play The Crucible written by Arthur Miller there is a character by the name of John Proctor (a sinner at first but then dies with dignity). Throughout the play he changes personality, how is as a person, and how he thinks about life. In this essay I will talk about how he changes from the beginning of the play to the end.
What really is a tragic hero, a tragic hero defined by Aristotle as someone who (“differentiate himself from every other man, that moment when out of a sky full of star he fixes on one star),” (Bhatia). Aristotle also says that to qualify for being a tragic hero is (“suffering of the most inward or psychological rather than physical),” (Bhatia). Although John Proctor isn’t really considered a tragic hero because of what Aristotle says, buy he is because of how he courageously saved his family’s name rather than him and his family living in shame.