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Terry Im
Mrs. Berry-Moore
11th AP Language & Composition
11/07/2023
The Tragedy of Proctor
The Crucible is a well-known novel by Arthur Miller that takes place during the Salem
Witch Trials, which was a time where people were killed in part due to personal interests and
baseless accusations. The story is an allegory for the Red Scare, which was a historical period in
which the fear of communism ran high, and people were accused of being communists just for
the benefit of others. Similar to the Red Scare, many people in the novel are blamed just for
other’s personal interests. Many of the characters in The Crucible represent a certain group of
people or concepts with the main character, John Proctor, representing the logical man that can
see past the nonsense in the presence of mass hysteria, or in the story’s context, the witch trials.
Proctor’s character itself follows a path of hardship throughout the story. In Act II, he first tries
to reason with the character Hale, trying to make him see the nonsense that is happening, but also
defends his wife after she is accused. However, when he fails to defend her before she is taken,
he tries to defend her in court in Act III, trying to reason with the judge, Dansforth, to see the
nonsense of the “evidence” and to let his wife go; however, he fails, and his wife is convicted as
a witch and is to be hanged, and even he is convicted as one, now he is only trying to preserve
his honor and the victims’ honor in Act IV. His story itself can be seen as a tragedy, in the end
only being able to preserve his honor and the victims’ honor but being unable to truly save
anyone.
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In Act II, he is visited by Hale, a man of religion but also logic, who seeks witches to
uncover in the town of Salem. Proctor first tries to convince Hale that none of the people so far
that have been convicted are actually witches. Hale counters by saying that the accused
themselves have confessed to being a witch. Hearing this, Proctor, with an excellent use of the
cause-and-effect structure, says, “There are them that will swear to anything before they’ll
hang,” (Miller Act II) mentioning how if the accused did not confess, they would have been
killed, which shows and shines onto how the court system and the witch trials in general are very
flawed. This cause-and-effect structure serves to reach out to Hale’s logical side and make him
see the faults in the accusations and trials going on, reasoning with him that only because they
were threatened to be hanged, which he labels as the cause, they confessed to being witches,
which he labels as the effect. It works for a bit, making Hale question himself, but Hale quickly
dismisses the thought standing strong. After his wife is accused of being a witch also, he resists
to her being taken. Hale tries to reason with him, saying that if Elizabeth is innocent, she will be
fine. Proctor rebuttals with a rhetorical question, saying, “Why do you never wonder if Parris be
innocent, or Abigail?” Parris is the prosecutor and Abigail is the accuser, and he is blaming them
with this rhetorical question, saying how they themselves are not innocent and are accusing
others, just for the sake of themselves. This emphasizes how nonsensical the trials are since even
the prosecutor and the accusers themselves may not be innocent. He says this with the intent to
reach out to Hale’s logical side once more, in an attempt to make him see the nonsense that is
going on. This statement drives deeper into Hale the doubt that was planted with the cause-andeffect structure, causing him to further question himself. However, this doubt is not enough for
Hale to stop Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth, from being taken and Proctor goes to defend his wife in
the root of the problem, the court.
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In Act III, Proctor tries to fight the claims in court that his wife is a witch and tries to
convince the judge of how the evidence is flawed and how there may be other reasons of the
accusations. When they bring up in court that Elizabeth had a poppet, trying to prove that she is a
witch, Proctor claims that there has never been a poppet in their house before and no one else has
seen it before either. Parris claims that they just hid it from sight and Proctor snorts back with a
use of satire, saying that, “There might also be a grad on with five legs in my house, but no one
has ever seen it,” ridiculing how the evidence is not firm and has holes, by jokingly saying that
there must also be a dragon that no one has seen to emphasize the ridiculously of the claim that
they just hid the poppet. This satire mostly aimed at the judge Dansforth, in order to try and
reason with him by emphasizing how ridiculous the evidence is and make him see how the
evidence is very flawed in nature. However, Dansforth is a very strong-willed man and does not
falter to believe in his own beliefs that Elizabeth may be a witch. When things are going
downhill and Abigail, the accuser, tries to keep reasoning with the judge that Elizabeth is a
witch, John uses repetition, as he yells out, “Whore! Whore! … It is a whore!” He repeats the
word “whore”, referencing that Abigail used to have an affair with him and that may be why she
is accusing Elizabeth, to replace her as his wife. He says this in an outburst to hopefully catch
Dansforth’s attention in a last-ditch effort to save his wife. It works in catching his attention as
Dansforth listens to how they had an affair and to the reasoning that there might be an exterior
purpose. However, in the end, everything fails as Proctor’s wife is convicted as a witch and also
Proctor himself is convicted as one. He could not save his wife and in turn, condemned himself.
In Act IV, Proctor is a broken man, having failed to save his wife and also having his
own life threatened. He has a choice between confessing himself as a witch and staying alive, or
continuing to say that he is not a witch and being hanged. At first Elizabeth, who is still alive as
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she is pregnant and will only be killed after her baby is born, convinces Proctor to falsely confess
to save his own life. However, upon confessing and realizing that in order to confess, he must
sign a document that will destroy not only his own honor, but also denounce everyone else who
was accused of being a witch, which he largely opposes. This opposition can be seen when he
tries to reason against having to denounce everyone else when he uses juxtaposition and says, “I
have three children – how may I teach them to walk like men in the world, and I have sold my
friends?” He juxtaposes how he is teaching his children to live as good people but he himself is
denouncing the victims of the witch trials, emphasizing how he does not want to denounce
everyone else. He tries to draw out sympathy from Dansforth as a last attempt to not have to
denounce everyone else. However, it fails, as Dansforth is too strong-willed to falter to his pleas.
Realizing how Dansforth is not faltering, Proctor decides to rip up the confession he was being
forced to sign, meaning he does not confessed, and will instead be hung. He decides that it is
better to preserve is own honor by dying truthfully and the victims’ honors by not condemning
them. Knowing that Proctor will die, Elizabeth begins to cry, but Proctor, with a great use of an
imperative syntax/sentence, says, “Give them no tear! Tears pleasure them! Show honor now,
show a stony heart and sink them with it!” With this he uses a commanding sentence on
Elizabeth, telling her to stand strong even though she knows that the man she loves as her
husband will be killed, standing as an example of how he wants to retain his own honor and the
honor of those who have been accused, emphasizing how, having lost and been defeated with
him on his death bed and his wife to be killed later, he will hold his goodness and honor up,
knowing that he will die an honest man. Elizabeth, who loves Proctor very dearly, listens to him
and starts to stop crying, realizing that he wants to keep his honor and uphold the honor of the
accused, choosing to respect it. The novel closes off with Proctor being sent to hang, a man who
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represents the concept of logic, symbolically being killed during a time of nonsensical
superstition.
The story of Proctor is a very sad one indeed. He stands to represent the logical man in a
time of mass hysteria and superstition, seeing through the baseless accusations and the nonsense.
In Act II he first tries to reason with Hale on how the witch trials are nonsense and tries to defend
his wife, but fails as she is taken away to be tried as a witch in court; in Act III he fails to defend
her in court as she in convicted as a witch and is to be killed, with himself also being convicted
as a witch and also being sentenced to death in the end. Finally in Act IV, Proctor has lost
everything and is defeated, with him unable to save anyone; the only thing he can do know is try
to preserve his honor and the honor of those who have been accused. While his words did move
people such as Hale and Elizabeth, with Hale beginning to see the nonsense as Proctor did and
Elizabeth starting to hold onto her honor as she will be killed, his words also uselessly fell on
people such as Dansforth, hardy people who refused to be swayed, ultimately condemning his
fate, ending the story of the man whose cries and pleas tragically fell on the ears of the deaf.