In every book the main character is faced with hardships. Some have a tragic ending whiles others have a happier more subtle ending. In both The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Crucible by Arthur Miller this is evident. The downfall and ending of both characters are different but they share the same fate due to their actions and decisions. Their tragic endings are results of their sins, pride and guilt. The tragic downfall of Dimmesdale, from The Scarlet Letter and John Proctor from The Crucible are very similar yet different in the way it led up to their death. Dimmesdale and Proctor both commit adultery and from then on everything goes down hill.
Proctor’s affair with Abigail Williams was the main cause of his death and downfall. “I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart...You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!” (Act 1 p.24) The quote above lets us know that Abigail is still in love with Proctor and wants him to leave his wife and come to her but he refuses and says that what they did was a thing in the past. “Wipe it out of mind. We never touched. Abby.” (Act 1 p.23) As a result of Proctor wanting to end all relations with Abigail, who will do anything to be with him, a chain of events happen that lead to Proctor being accused of being a witch and eventually his death. “You’re the Devil’s man…He wake me every night his eyes were like coals and his fingers claw my nick, and I sign, I sign…” (Act 3 p. 118-119). Proctor’s adultery lead to him being accused of a witch but he could have prevented his death if it wasn’t for his pride. Pride killed Proctor at the end of the novel not his adultery. Proctor could have saved his life and taken care of his...
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... mine!” (Chapter 11 p.126) Dimmesdale punishing himself day after day helped quicken his death. His guilt led him to hurt himself and hastened his death.
Proctor on the other hand looks as if he isn’t guilty about anything. As we read The Crucible we know that the whole witch hunt could have been prevented if Proctor had confessed and knowing that all thing could have been avoided if he had confessed Proctor doesn’t seem to show an ounce of guilt but rather other emotions when talking about the affair or Abigail in general. “Let you go to Ezekiel Cheever—he knows you well. And tell him what she said to you last week… then, let you think on it.”(Act 2 p.53) Proctor in this quote seems as if he want the conversation to be over quickly. He is more ashamed and angry here than guilty and whenever the affair is mentioned or brought up he feel mostly anger and frustration.
After Elizabeth, his wife, finds out about his affair with Abigail he tries his hardest to prevent anyone from finding out because he doesn’t want to go to prison and doesn’t want his good name ruined. Again, that isn’t the best thing to do but it proves that Proctor has immense pride in himself and what he has accomplished in his lifetime that he doesn’t want to be looked down on after years of being a role model to all the civilians of Salem. At the end of the play, the only way to save himself from hanging is by confessing to the act of witchcraft. He almost does it, but he says, “I am John Proctor! You will not use me! It is no part of salvation that you should use me!”(pg.538, lines 879-82) He doesn’t confess because can’t handle ruining his name anymore than it has been and because he is a man of truth.
Life is unpredictable, and through trial and error humanity learns how to respond to conflicts and learns how to benefit from mistakes. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a character who changes and gains knowledge from the trials he faces, but first he has to go through physical, spiritual, and emotional agony. In the midst of all the havoc, the young theologian is contaminated with evil but fortunately his character develops from fragile to powerful, and the transformation Dimmesdale undergoes contributes to the plot’s climax.
In the words of Alexander Pope 'To err is human.' Everybody makes mistakes. It is human nature. However, how one deals with the mistake is much more important than the mistake itself. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Dimmesdale and Danforth's sins have similar motives, but the characters have distinctly different methods of sin and resolution.
Proctor has many character traits that contribute to him being so difficult to figure out. His crime of lechery against his wife, and his willingness to save her, are both intermixed in a tangle of ethics. After committing adultery with Abigail, John clearly has a guilty conscious. When
Death is a major theme through both Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. In the first text, mass hysteria rips through Salem after a group of girls danced in the woods and blame everything and anything on witchcraft. The girl who could be identified as the main trouble-maker is Abigail Williams. She kicked up all of the witch suspicions because she had an affair with John Proctor, the identifiable hero. The story climaxed with the death of characters that drew affection from the readers. In the second piece of literature, the main conflict happens to be that of Hester Prynne, who committed adultery and had a child. There was a lot of public ridicule in this instance and many underlying plots within it. Again, the climax of the story could be argued to be the death of a beloved character. These two particular titles do in fact share a lot of common ideas and themes, while at the same having very
John Proctor a well-respected man in the city of Salem has a deep secret that plays a major role later on in the story. He had an intimate affair with a younger single girl named Abigail which he regrets greatly. Proctor shows his disgust when he argues with Abigail by insisting, “Abby I never give you hope to wait for me” (page168). Proctor exclaims that he surely regrets his sin and doesn’t want Abigail to think that he loves her and not his own wife. Although Proctor may still have feelings about Abigail he reassures her that he will never have emotional relationships with her ever again. He had the ultimate opportunity to get back at Abigail and stop the witch trials from happening when he meets Abigail alone in the woods; upon their encounter she confesses to John, “We were dancing in the woods last night and my uncle leaped in ...
Despite these good qualities, John Proctor had many flaws as well. Lust was a constant struggle for Proctor in many forms. For instance, when Abigail was working for him and his wife, he lusted after her and committed adultery by having an affair. Afterwards, Proctor was extremely repentant and stopped seeing her. “Abby, you’ll put it out of mind. I’ll not be comin’ for you more” (Miller 21). This essentially lead to his demise because of the affair, Abigail became infatuated over Proctor to the point where she went into the woods with her friends and Tituba and practiced “witchcraft” to kill Proctor’s wife. “You drank a charm to kill John Proctor’s wife!” (Miller18). When the girls were caught and the whole “witch” hysteria broke out, people were getting accused and executed, including Proctor, who wouldn’t confess to witchcraft and died because of it. If Proctor never lusted after Abigail and had an affair with her in the first place, accusations of “witchcraft” would have never happened and his death. Throughout the book unlike many other characters, Proctor never accepted the girl's story about witchcraft to be true. He on the other hand knew
He is feared and respected throughout the town of Salem, but few know that he is guilty of adultery with the teenage servant Abigail Williams. As a result of this affair, Proctor is caught in guilt, which effects his self-perception.
He was the only one who knew that everything Abigail was doing, was in fact to get him to lover her and nothing she said about the witches was true. Along side John Proctor was Mr. Hale who also knew the girls were lying and this led him to quit the court because he knew it was controlled by the Devil her self Abigail. In the end John Proctor gave his own life so the hundreds of other people sitting in jail would get another truthful chance and Proctor himself would have his goodness now.
“Proctor, respected and even feared in Salem, has come to regard himself as a kind of fraud”(148), summarized much of Proctor and his personality. He tries to keep his exterior clean and strong so that no one will question is authority or call him to question. However, inside John Proctor struggles with the sins he’s committed. He confessed and wanted to move past it, but can’t because it hurts his pride. He does his best to be as noble as possible. Proctor is noble because, “I have forgot Abigail”(176), and he tries to put it behind himself. He constantly tries to make up for what he has done which makes him very noble. He’s also responsible for his own fate because he chose to confess to his wife and he chose to forget Abigail. He no longer wants any part of his past sins and desires to control his fate again. Proctor takes his fate back when he accuses Abigail, “It is a whore!”(193). He knows that by doing that he risked being arrested or being called a witch, but he risked it anyway. He put his pride down long enough to save his wife, which is very noble, and he took responsibility for what he’s done. He also is prepared to face what was going to happen after he made that accusation. John Proctor may have lots of pride, but he is responsible for his fate and of noble
Moreover, he struggles with his moral standing on this issue because he is partly responsible for Abigail's vendetta against his wife. This guilt is best demonstrated when Proctor says at the end of the second act:
Lies. Death. Affairs. John Proctor had fornication with Abigail, who hates his wife and would do anything to make sure she was out of the picture. Abigail started the talk of witchcraft because her and the girls were caught dancing in the woods and she did not want to get into any trouble. John died because he was accused of witchcraft . Reverend Hale came into town and aided in pursuing the “witchcraft hunt”. In the book The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, Hale is the most responsible for John Proctor’s death because when he arrived in town he started the gossip of witchcraft, he pressured and inquired the girls to give him a name, and he left the court when he could have tried to salvage the innocent people.
Early on in the play, the reader comes to understand that John Proctor has had an affair with Abigail Williams while she was working in his home. Abigail believed that if she got rid of Elizabeth Proctor, then John Proctor would become her own. John Proctor had an affair with Abigail, but for him it was just lust, while Abigail believed it to be true love. She told John Proctor that she loved him, and once she destroys Elizabeth, they would be free to love one another. John is horrified at this, but can do nothing to convince Abigail that he is not in love with her. Because of Abigail's twisted plot to secure John for herself, Elizabeth is arrested. John Proctor has to wrestle with the decision of what to do. He knows that he has sinned; yet he does not want to hurt his beloved wife. This is partly why he is willing to die. He knows he has already sinned.
John Proctor is both flawed and honorable. After having an affair with Abigail. His wife has been unable to forgive him for this, and their marriage is unhappy, John has the guilt from his past affair weighing down on his shoulders, he apologizes for the mistake but it is shown that the guilt is still there “I have not moved from there to there without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart. I cannot speak but I am doubted every moment judged for lies, as though I come into a court when I come into this house!” this shows that the guilt is crushing him that he has been trying to apologized for his wrong doings but hasn’t been forgiven he needs his wife to forget about the pass and move on he will do anything to show his wife he is devoted to her. John Proctor knows what he will do knowing that now his wife is charged with witchcraft he must go to the court and prove to them that this is all a hoax and this his wife is not involved in witchcraft and that Abigail is making this all up. John makes a ...
...h, his wife, does not want to admit her husband’s deceit, proctor is accused of lying to the court. When Proctor confesses his sin of lechery he feels better and his internal guilt is freed. This is different to the end of the play where he signed the confession to witchcraft. He later rips it up as could not live with himself if he were to allow Abigail to get away with her lies, through confessing to something he did not do. In ripping up the confession he is also able to keep his good name which he says at the end is all he has left, his name, and he does not want to give it away.