John Proctor's Struggle in Miller's The Crucible
Coursework
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by a group of Puritan
settlers who arrived from England in 1630. The Massachusetts Bay
colony was driven by the religious principles of Congregationalism.
Each church and its community were supposed to be independent, but in
fact they all followed the same strict code of belief and behavior.
Members of the congregation who swayed from these norms were severely
punished.
The Dilemma of Conscience that Proctor Faces in Arthur Miller's The Crucible
Conscience is the awareness of right and wrong. In the Crucible, the
idea of conscience is strongly emphasised.
Throughout the play, John Proctor is faced with situations regarding
his family, friends, himself and moreover his moral conscience. The
idea of conscience in The Crucible is based very much on Christian
concepts, firstly the idea of morality, or conscience of right and
wrong, secondly the idea of the confession of sin, and finally the
idea of guilt and penance for sins.
Proctor is so patently the victim of hysteria that his very existence
is a challenge to the fanatic temperament, and he is consumed by its
malice.
Anti-heroes are characters who often appear in books and movies as someone who is considered to be not very heroic at first but then later on in the story becomes a more moral and heroic figure. John Proctor from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is an excellent example of an anti-hero because of the hardships that he has to go through as the story progresses. John Proctor is a character who changes his morals and advances in the story. By the end of the play Proctor becomes a better person. The progression is slow but obviously shown throughout the four
John Proctor and I are very similar. John Proctor is a character from the The Crucible, where he is a farmer in Salem Massachusetts. He is a honest man that works hard but is not liked by the Reverend in Salem. Both he and his wife are accused of witchcraft. He dies but she does not. John and I are similar in how rational we think, how hard working we are, and how intelegente we are.
abandoned cattle bellow on the high roads, the stink of rotting crops hangs everywhere and
First off, what is irony? Many people are under the impression that irony is just when something happens that you don't expect (or that you really hoped wouldn't happen). In reality, true irony only happens when a situation is the exact opposite of what you would expect. Irony abounds throughout The Crucible as characters who believe they are combating the Devil’s handiwork actually perform it themselves. There are several ironies in Act 1 that center around Abigail Williams. In her conversation with John, Abigail claims that he helped her realize all the lies she was told by two-faced people in Salem who only publicly adhere to the conventions of respectable society (pg. 22). The irony is that, in the face of John’s rejection, Abigail turns
In Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, many women were being accused of witchcraft. The people of the town knew how controversial it was, but the fear instilled in them caused them to go along with the lies. They are forced to choose between survival and what they believe is right, as Puritans. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller depicts his message that self preservation overrides personal morals through imagery and situational irony.
In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, not many characters would deserve the title of a tragic hero. Salem is filled with townspeople who search to sell out others to save their own reputation. Not a single man besides John Proctor would've ripped his signature to save his reputation and be hanged. Others didn't have what it took to openly refuse the court, but John Proctor did. In Arthur Miller's play The Crucible John Proctor was a tragic hero because he was first a selfish and adulterous man, to later becoming a selfless man who pays the price when falsely accused.
The symbolic meaning in The Crucible is not overtly stated for anyone to simply read; it
In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, several characters are tested with their own crucible. One such character is John Proctor. His test was a relatively common test: to choose between what is morally right, or wrong. We are told that, prior to the beginning of the play, John Proctor and Abigail Williams, his previous house servant, had an affair behind the back of Elizabeth Proctor, John's wife. Now that the affair is over, John must prove himself worthy of Elizabeth's trust and love, and must try to redeem his good character and to be a good Christian. Though there may be differing opinions about whether he passed or did not pass his crucible, I believe he did. Through events in this play, we can see a good-hearted man change for the better.