The Crucible Reputation Essay

774 Words2 Pages

Handle with care
Our reputations are beliefs and opinions that are held by our friends, family and even complete strangers about bout us. Someone’s reputation determines how they will be seen before even meeting them, almost like a first impression. Which is why your reputation is something you need to handle with care and protect, however some will go to extremes in doing this for instance the play The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller. It is a look into what it was like back in the 1800’s during the Salem witch trails. During this play Miller makes the strong argument of the importance of reputation and the countless ways people will protect it. In the play this occurs with many of the characters some more than others yet it’s of importance to everyone in some way or another. The protection of one’s reputation also occurs outside of the play, an example of this would be in politics and sports. In the play The Crucible, Author Miller makes the argument that reputation is incredibly important and people will go to great lengths such as betrayal and lying to protect it, quite often ones morality will become altered when protecting their reputation.
Protecting ones reputation can cause them to betray others witch will allow them to alter there morality. Right away we get a glimpse of what Paris values in his life when he tries to get information out of Abigail of what made Betty sick, “Abigail… now my ministry’s at stake … and perhaps your cousin’s life” (Miller 11). With this statement we can see that Paris places more importance in his church then his own daughter. Miller is communicating that the people of Salem are more concerned with their reputations then the important people in their lives. In a way Paris is betraying his d...

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...ns in regular life. For instance, recently the famous bike rider Lance Armstrong finally confessed that he had been lying about taking performance enhancing drugs. Armstrong lied to the public and to himself about taking the substances; the reason for his untruthfulness is so his good name will be preserved. However his lies eventually caught up to him.
The concept of protecting your reputation by lying or betraying others is in sense ironic; in order to keep people from seeing you as someone that is corrupt you do those corrupt actions. The importance of someone’s reputation and the distance they will go to keep it untainted is based on the individual but as Miller showed us it’s easy for someone to go against what they believe in and become corrupt. Humans naturally want others to see them in a positive way, which is why you must handle your reputation with care.

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