Marriage of John and Elizabeth in Arthur Miller's The Crucible

Marriage of John and Elizabeth in Arthur Miller's The Crucible

John Proctor shows many strengths and weaknesses throughout The

Crucible. He is honest, upright and blunt-spoken. His manliness acts

a great strength, but also as a weakness, for this is what led him to

his affair with Abigail. The guilt he feels over this contributes to

his imprisonment and death as it prevents him from speaking out soon

enough.

Proctor is honest and regrets what he has done wrong. “God help me, I

lusted and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a whore’s

vengeance and you must see it, I set myself entirely in your hand.”

This shows he accepts his mistakes and regrets them, but he knows he

must confess in court.

He is a very proud man and cares about his reputation a lot. He has a

fear of public opinion and thinks everybody should think good of him,

which contributes to his death. His decision to accept death rather

than betray his friends and family allows him to recover the sense of

goodness he lost when he committed adultery with Abigail and to serve

his community. His fear of public opinion compelled him to withhold

his adultery from court. He is outspoken and blunt in his disbelief

of witchcraft, he initially chose to downplay the significance of

Abigail’s accusations. This allows him to look rational but can also

be seen like he is not making an effort to take the necessary action.

John is kind, strong and sharp. “Let them that have lied die now to

keep their souls.” This shows he is strong under pressure and now in

the face of death.

Elizabeth Proctor also shows many strengths and weaknesses throughout

the play...

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...Elizabeth.

He is forced to tell the court he committed adultery, they then

accused him of witch craft and execute him. If he had admitted to

adultery sooner he may have saved his life.

Arthur Miller may have chosen to place a relationship like this is in

the centre of the play because it is very gripping and will keep the

audience entertained, until the very end of the play, when the

relationship is ended. It is also very realistic, if it had been a

happily married couple, everybody was content and there were no

arguments it would have not been very realistic, and not very

enjoyable for the audience.

Overall the marriage of John and Elizabeth Proctor is very tense and

under a lot of stress, from the beginning of the play both people have

very strong characters and make the play interesting for the audience.