Saturday, June 22, 2013

Analysis of Major Characters


Analysis of Major Characters

John Proctor

In a sense, The Crucible has the structure of a classical tragedy, with John Proctor as the play’s tragic hero. Honest, upright, and blunt-spoken, Proctor is a good man, but one with a secret, fatal flaw  .His lust for Abigail Williams led to their affair (which occurs before the play begins), and created Abigail’s jealousy of his wife, Elizabeth, which sets the entire witch hysteria in motion. Once the trials begin, Proctor realizes that he can stop Abigail’s rampage through Salem but only if he confesses to his adultery. Such an admission would ruin  his good name, and Proctor is, above all, a proud man who places great emphasis on his reputation. He eventually makes an attempt, through Mary Warren’s testimony  to name Abigail as a fraud without revealing the crucial information. When this attempt fails, he finally bursts out  , with a confession, calling Abigail a “whore” and proclaiming his guilt publicly. Only then does he realize that it is too late, that matters have gone too far, and that not even the truth can break the powerful frenzy that he has allowed Abigail to whip up Proctor’s confession succeeds only in leading to his arrest and conviction  as a witch, and though he lambastes the court and its proceedings  he is also aware of his terrible role in allowing this fervor to grow unchecked.
Proctor redeems himself and provides a final denunciation of the witch trials in his final act. Offered the opportunity to make a public confession of his guilt and live, he almost succumbs , even signing a written confession. His immense pride and fear of public opinion compelled him to withhold his adultery from the court, but by the end of the play he is more concerned with his personal integrity than his public reputation. He still wants to save his name, but for personal and religious, rather than public, reasons. Proctor’s refusal to provide a false confession is a true religious and personal stand. Such a confession would dishonor his fellow prisoners, who are brave enough to die as testimony to the truth. Perhaps more relevantly, a false admission would also dishonor him, staining not just his public reputation, but also his soul. By refusing to give up his personal integrity Proctor implicitly proclaims his conviction that such integrity will bring him to heaven. He goes to the gallows redeemed for his earlier sins. As Elizabeth says to end the play, responding to Hale’s plea that she convince Proctor to publicly confess: “He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!”

Abigail Williams

Of the major characters, Abigail is the least complex. She is clearly the villain of the play, more so than Parris or Dan forth: she tells lies, manipulates her friends and the entire town, and eventually sends nineteen innocent people to their deaths. Throughout the hysteria, abigail’s motivations never seem more complex than simple jealousy and a desire to have revenge on Elizabeth Proctor. The language of the play is almost biblical   and Abigail seems like a biblical character—a Jezebel figure , driven only by sexual desire and a lust for power. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out a few background details that, though they don’t mitigate Abigail’s guilt, make her actions more understandable.
Abigail is an orphan and an unmarried girl; she thus occupies a low rung  on the Puritan Salem social ladder (the only people below her are the slaves, like Tituba, and social outcasts ). For young girls in Salem, the minister and the other male adults are God’s earthly representatives , their authority derived from on high. The trials, then, in which the girls are allowed to act as though they have a direct connection to God, empower ، the previously powerless Abigail. Once shunned and scorned by the respectable townsfolk who had heard rumors of her affair with John Proctor, Abigail now finds that she has clout , and she takes full advantage of it. A mere accusation from one of Abigail’s troop is enough to incarcerate and convict even the most well-respected inhabitant of Salem. Whereas others once reproached her for her adultery, she now has the opportunity to accuse them of the worst sin of all: devil-worship.

Reverend Hale

John Hale, the intellectual , naïve witch-hunter, enters the play in Act I when Parris summons him to examine his daughter, Betty. In an extended commentary on Hale in Act I, Miller describes him as “a tight-skinned , eager-eyed intellectual. This is a beloved errand   for him; on being called here to ascertain witchcraft he has felt the pride of the specialist  whose unique knowledge has at last been publicly called for.” Hale enters in a flurry of activity, carrying large books and projecting an air of great knowledge. In the early going, he is the force behind the witch trials, probing for confessions and encouraging people to testify. Over the course of the play, however, he experiences a transformation, one more remarkable than that of any other character. Listening to John Proctor and Mary Warren, he becomes convinced that they, not Abigail, are telling the truth. In the climactic scene in the court in Act III, he throws his lot in with those opposing the witch trials. In tragic fashion , his about-face  comes too late—the trials are no longer in his hands but rather in those of Dan forth and the theocracy, which has no interest in seeing its proceedings exposed as a sham.
The failure of his attempts to turn the tide renders the once-confident  
 Hale a broken man . As his belief in witchcraft falters, so does his faith in the law. In Act IV, it is he who counsels the accused witches to lie, to confess their supposed sins in order to save their own lives. In his change of heart and subsequent despair, Hale gains the audience’s sympathy but not its respect, since he lacks the moral fiber of Rebecca Nurse or, as it turns out, John Proctor. Although Hale recognizes the evil of the witch trials, his response is not defiance but surrender. He insists that survival is the highest good, even if it means accommodating oneself to injustice—something that the truly heroic characters can never accept.




Elizabeth Proctor -  John Proctor’s wife. Elizabeth fired  abigail when she discovered that her husband was having an affair with Abigail. Elizabeth is supremely virtuous, but often cold.

Reverend Parris -  The minister of Salem’s church. Reverend Parris is a paranoid , power-hungry, yet oddly   self-pitying figure. Many of the townsfolk, especially John Proctor, dislike him, and Parris is very concerned with building his position in the community.

Rebecca Nurse -  Francis Nurse’s wife. Rebecca is a wise, sensible, and upright woman, held in tremendous regard by most of the Salem community. However, she falls victim to the hysteria when the Putnams accuse her of witchcraft and she refuses to confess.
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Francis Nurse -  A wealthy, influential man in Salem. Nurse is well respected by most people in Salem, but is an enemy of Thomas Putnam and his wife.


 Judge Dan forth   -  The deputy governor of Massachusetts and the presiding judge at the witch trials. Honest and scrupulous , at least in his own mind, Dan forth is convinced that he is doing right in rooting out witchcraft

Giles Corey -  An elderly but feisty farmer in Salem, famous for his tendency to file lawsuits    Giles’s wife, Martha, is accused of witchcraft, and he himself is eventually held in contempt of court and pressed to death with large stones.

Thomas Putnam -  A wealthy, influential citizen of Salem, Putnam holds a grudge  .

against Francis Nurse for preventing Putnam’s brother-in-law from being elected to the office of minister. He uses the witch trials to increase his own wealth by accusing people of witchcraft and then buying up their land.

Ann Putnam -  Thomas Putnam’s wife. Ann Putnam has given birth to eight children, but only Ruth Putnam survived. The other seven died before they were a day old, and Ann is convinced that they were murdered by supernatural means.

Ruth Putnam -  The Putnams’ lone surviving child out of eight. Like Betty Parris, Ruth falls into a strange stupor   after Reverend Parris catches her and the other girls dancing in the woods at night.

Tituba -  Reverend Parris’s black slave from Barbados. Tituba agrees to perform voodoo   at Abigail’s request.

Mary Warren -  The servant in the Proctor household and a member of Abigail’s group of girls. She is a timid  girl, easily influenced by those around her, who tried unsuccessfully to expose the hoax  and ultimately recanted her confession.

Betty Parris -  Reverend Parris’s ten-year-old daughter. Betty falls into a strange stupor after Parris catches her and the other girls dancing in the forest with Tituba. Her illness and that of Ruth Putnam fuel the first rumors of witchcraft.

Martha Corey -  Giles Corey’s third wife. Martha’s reading habits lead to her arrest and conviction for witchcraft.

Ezekiel Cheever -  A man from Salem who acts as clerk of the court during the witch trials. He is upright and determined to do his duty for justice.

Judge Hathorne -  A judge who presides, along with Danforth, over the witch trials.

Herrick -  The marshal of Salem.

Mercy Lewis -  One of the girls in Abigail’s group.


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