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.
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.
