In the play, The Crucible, Reverend Hale is portrayed as the tragic hero. His tragic flaw, being a pushover, leads to his downfall, and in this essay I will explain how.
When Hale is first introduced, he is said to be the minister that will bring peace to the town of Salem. He is truly a man of God, and he is determined (which is his noble quality) to eliminate the witches within the town. Even though there is almost no evidence to suggest that any of the individuals being accused as witches are indeed witches, he believes the girls and is easily influenced by them. He then begins to interview and suggest that there are indeed witches in the town because he truly believes the girls are telling the truth. This, however, swiftly leads to his downfall.
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It is when John Proctor, who he believes to be an honest man, is accused of witchcraft when Hale is able to see that the girls have been lying all along, and that he is responsible for multiple deaths. He leaves the court, and leaves the “side of God” because he knows what he is doing and what the court is doing is truly wrong. He turns against everything he believes in in order to try and reveal the truth, even if it means that his reputation will heavily decline, and he also acknowledges that he is responsible for the deaths of many people when he says, “I come to do the devils work, I come to counsel counsel christians they should believe themselves. There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!” (pg. 82). These are the many things that truly make Hale the tragic hero of The
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, is about mass hysteria of witches being in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. An educated man named Revered Hale arrived in the town with his exclusive knowledge of witches to help the town eliminate the presence of the Devil. He became a member of the court and aided in putting innocent people in jail or hung. As Hale started to see the consequences of his actions, he struggled with fixing his mistakes. The change in his perspective of the witch trials caused his overall personality and attitude to change as well. Hale’s dialogue, stage directions, and other people’s perceptions of him reveal a man motivated by good intentions; furthermore, his mission to help Salem destroyed evil in the beginning and his attempts
Hale takes this job to a personal level when the the crisis takes a turn for the worse. He pleads with the people convicted of witchcraft to confess. He feels he is responsible for their lives because his purpose was to rid the town of witchcraft, not innocent lives. He beholds himself a failure when he cannot convince the accused to confess. His well justified pride is broken. He came into this village like a bride groom to his beloved, bearing gifts of high religion; the very crowns of holy law I brought, and what I touched with my bright confidence, it died; and where I turned the eye of my great faith, blood flowed up. He urges Elizabeth not ot let her pride interfere with her duty as a wife, as it did with his own duty.
His respect for authority disintegrates as he learns that everything in life that he once placed emphasis on, like the power of the written law and the authority of the court, is corrupt in the town of Salem. Hale comes to the end that the law is not absolute, one does not need to strictly adhere to the law, and that authority does not always preside over everything. He recognizes the evil in the town of Salem, yet in response, he does not choose defiance, but surrender. When he stops believing in witchcraft, he stops believing in everything that he once believed to be true. Not only does he no longer believe in the prevalence of law, he no longer believes in the ascendancy of religion over all aspects of life. As Reverend Hale loses his conviction for authority, he correspondingly loses his identity, yet, in our eyes of the reader, he gains respect and sympathy in its
" The fact that he only wants to please people is what gets him into trouble. He tries too hard to tell people only what they want to hear. This all results in Hale changing his mind about the court, the witches, and Salem.
[A cell in Salem jail, that fall, The accused women sat on the cold stone floor. Hale quietly came seeking justice. The cold of the night stabbed the accused women like daggers, knowing all they had was their dignity and pride. Reminiscing of her husband, Elizabeth caressed her now 3 month pregnant paunch]
played a kind of a passive role, he always wanted to be in the middle
he has spent his whole life in the study of it. “We cannot look to
The Crucible, a container that resists hear or the hollow at the bottom of an ore furnace. However its connotations include melting pot, in the symbolic sense, and the bearing of a cross. Elizabeth, John Proctor’s wife; a cold, childless woman who is an upright character who cannot forgive her husband’s adultery until just before he died: she is accused of being a witch. Reverend Hale, a self-proclaimed expert on witchcraft; at the play’s end tries to save the accused. John Proctor, a good man with human failures and a hidden secret, a affair with Abigail, he is often the voice of reason in the play; accused of witchcraft.“I do not judge you.
Now I will look later into the story and look into how Hale is slowly changing. Towards the end of the first act we finally get to see (or read) John Hale. Because of this there is some direct and indirect characterization by the author. We also get a look at Mr. Hales motives because of this. “Coming into Salem now, Reverend Hale conceives of himself much as a young doctor o...
When we first meet Hale he has just come from another town he has purged of witchcraft. He says, “No, no. Now let me instruct you. We cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone, and I must tell you all that I shall not proceed unless you are prepared to believe me if I should find no bruise of hell upon her.” (Miller 478.) Hale is very believing in his work and believes he truly knows how to rid a town of witches. Later on in the story, after seeing the results of the trials and how many people were dying, Hale’s idea’s started to change. “ I have this morning signed away the soul of Rebecca Nurse, Your Honor. I will not conceal it; my hand shakes yet as with a wound! I pray you, sir, this argument let lawyers present to you.” (Miller 514.) Towards the end, Hale realizes how many people are dying and maybe people are not confessing to witchcraft because there never was any. At the end of the play, Hale realizes that the trials were sending innocent people to their graves and that his mission was not as godly as it
Life as a human is dictated by an inborn hunger or purpose, and people, in general, will act on this hunger for their own personal gain in their individual ways. This hunger, be it for wealth, land, love, power, revenge, or pride, can, and will be the undoing or failing of all mankind as Miller so clearly points out in his play The Crucible. This essay will explore the motives of characters within the play and even the motives of Arthur Miller himself and therefore show how conflict stems from certain recognisable human failings, including those mentioned above, fear, and hysteria. Reverend Parris is the character that initiates the hysteria of the Salem witch trials, in a community where authorities wasted no time minding the business of its citizens, what should have been seen as teen frivolity was blown into one of the ugliest moments in American history. Parris sparks this by firstly acting on his own paranoia, which the reader would find in the introduction 'he believed he was being persecuted wherever he went';, and calling Reverend Hale in an attempt for self-preservation '….
When Hale came to Salem, his heavy books gave him confidence.”They must be; they are weighted with authority” (Miller, 1279). By Act II, he begins to change in his belief, that what he has brought to
Hale’s radical change takes place throughout the play in three stages and throughout the play contributes greatly. He is the model by which the townspeople follow, though they are behind him they do eventually take his stance on the trials. His conformity and inward questioning are quintessential examples of what every story needs: the unsure character.
The test that Reverend John Hale faces is whether he can change his character early enough to redeem himself for the lives he has caused to be lost. He is the character that shows the most significant transformation overall. When he first comes to Salem, he is eager to find witchcraft and is honored that his scholastic skills are necessary. He feels that as an exorcist, it is his duty to help pe...
Arthur Miller weaves many events into the story that contribute to the alteration in Hale’s mindset. In the middle of Act 1, Hale arrives and is perceived by the town as “The truth seeker”. Hale is called upon to determine what sort of witchcraft, if any, is occurring (Page 33-35). Hale arrives admired by the people, who all want him to claim it was witchcraft that has occurred. Although unsure, he understands he is being led toward the conclusion of witchcraft by the town’s false pretences and mass hysteria. He begins to see a weakness in the position of the townspeople of Salem and tries to not let common accusations be the support for his diagnosis.