Loyalty
loy·al·ty
ˈloiəltē/ noun
The quality of being loyal to someone or something.
To me loyalty mean staying by someones side whether they are right or wrong; being able to tell them when they're wrong and helping them through it. It is a strong feeling that is hard to get rid of.
Personally, my strongest memory of loyalty is when I had to pick up my mom from Downtown; we had gotten into a fight about rent earlier and she got drunk and left. A few hours later, I got a call saying she would be arrested if nobody came to get her. In all honesty, I wanted to just let her be arrested, but I had promised that I wouldn't leave her if I could help it. Even though I wanted so badly to just leave her to be arrested and be done with the
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situation, I went Downtown to get her. My actions didn't really matter because she got in trouble again within a few weeks and got arrested anyways, but I still tried to help her. After everything she did, I still tried to be loyal to her and keep my promise. In The Crucible loyalty is one of the strongest themes; The strongest being the characters loyalty to God.
In the book, the main conflict derives from the fact that the society is incredibly strict and loyal to their faith; not allowing people to dance, sing, or even read books. In the beginning of the book, we find that Abigail and her friends went against many of these laws by dancing in the woods and “Trying to summon the Devil”. They get caught, and in order to protect themselves from punishment, the create a story about seeing numerous people's spirits with the Devil, and that they wish to “give” themselves to God. The townsfolk believe this as they really have no reason not to, because to them, doubting the girls would be like doubting their faith. The townsfolk show their extreme loyalty to their faith by blindly believing the girls' story to be true, this would not be inherently bad – If it weren't for the numerous people that died.
The secondary conflict of The Crucible derives from John Proctors lack of loyalty to both his faith and to his wife. In the first act of the book John admits to the reader that he had and affair with Abigail a few months earlier. He denies that he feels anything for her, but Abigail argues,
saying “Do you tell me you've never looked up at my window?” To which John replies, “I may have looked up” (23). At the start of the book John seems to have legitimate feelings for Abigail, but tries to deny them as they are are a sin as well as a betrayal to his wife. John later loses these feelings after Abigail mercilessly accuses people of witchcraft for fun, and he tries to save his wife from one of Abigails' accusations, showing that he does have feeling for his wife despite cheating on her while she was sick. In the end, many of the characters died because of their loyalties; either those to God or to their pride, but their loyalties are also one of the reasons the trials were ended, such as the people who rioted against the unfair trails and the judges to protect the ones the care about. Loyalty was a major factor of the Salem witch trails, even if it isn't one of the more obvious ones.
Loyalty is one of the ethics that is instilled in a person at a young age. Loyalty can range from loyalty to a family member, friend, teammate, ect. In Larry Watson's, Montana 1948, the summer of 1948 tests the loyalty of each character and is told through the eyes of a young boy, David. The picture was clear to David when Marie was Murdered. Through this tragic event David was able to read each family member determining whether they were loyal or whether they would betray.
When the play sets in action, John has had a past affair with his servant, Abigail Williams. His wife, Elizabeth Proctor, is very forgiving of his sin, but John has his mind set that he will not confess to anyone else, in fear of ruining his good name and reputation. The affair between John and Abigail causes the start of chaotic witchery and accusation. After the affair, Abigail becomes horribly jealous of Elizabeth Proctor. Proctor realizes there is only one way to stop all the witch hysteria in Salem, and that would be to admit to adultery which is considered a sin. . Also in the beginning R...
The first struggle that John Proctor faces in The Crucible is his guilt over committing the sin of adultery. This moral problem continues throughout the play, and it is the primary moral predicament that Proctor faces in the play. He has broken his own moral code as was as the moral law in the Puritanical Salem in his affair with Abigail.
John Proctor is a quiet man who has a secret that will turn into his downfall. Even though he has a family and owns a farm on the outskirts of town, he fails to keep his morals straight and eventually falls victim to his own lust. Because of the lust between John and Abigail, she starts a witch-hunt so hopefully she can have John all to herself, and get herself out of trouble. The hunt causes John to forget his pride and sacrifice himself for his family and his friends. By doing so he shows the whole village of Salem what it means to be a Puritan. In the play “The Crucible,” a victim of contradictory emotions, who fights for what is right and becomes a hero for the village of Salem, is a farmer, John Proctor.
John Proctor is an honest, though harsh, man who is clearly the protagonist of The Crucible. Before the beginning of the play, John had an affair with Abigail Williams, a girl who worked in his household, which was abruptly ended when Elizabeth Proctor, John's wife, fired her. This event causes Abigail to desire revenge against Elizabeth while she still pines for John. Once the trials are well underway, Abigail accuses Elizabeth of being a witch, which leads to her arrest. John goes to the court in defense of his wife, where he reveals that he did indeed committed adultery with Abigail in an attempt to expose her as a fraud and a liar. Unfortunately, John's appeal falls on deaf ears and he is arrested as well. While his wife manages to get a temporary stay of execution, due to the fact that she is pregnant at the time of the trials, which in the end saves her by insuring her life until the chaos, hysteria, and persecution comes to an end, John is sentenced to death. The play ends with his hanging, but his death puts an end to the trials.
Abigail’s struggles come from many of her personal desires that are forbidden in her society, causing her to lie. However, this also creates further social problems, such as the initiation of the witch trials. After Betty is stuck in a coma, Reverend Parris questions Abigail about the night in the woods, because he is suspicious and she denies that it had anything to do with witchcraft. Abigail replies to Parris saying, “ We never conjured spirits” (24). Abigail lies to Parris, denies the statement that witchcraft ever occurred, and says that all they did was danced. Witchcraft and dancing both are sins in the society, and she knows that her reputation is at stake and finds the need to lie to look innocent. Parris wants to be sure and calls Reverend Hale to look further into the issue. Once Reverend Hale comes into town, he questions Abigail about the night, and she once again denies everything he asks her. Abigail is being questioned by Hale, and once Tituba enters she screams, “ She made me do it! She made Betty do it! She makes me drink blood!” (45). Abigail denies every...
In the beginning, John Proctor is described as a decent man, but throughout the story it is revealed that he has many layers of secrets that he must wrestle with internally before deciding to tell people in order to save his wife and friends from death. His crucible is the decision to tell the court that he slept with Abigail in order to save his wife, but in the process it will destroy his reputation and taint his name. His passion to keep his wife alive is shown when he says "My wife will never die for me?" (Miller, 76), but his passion to stay alive and to maintain a good reputation is shown when he says "It is not a child," (Miller, 96) in reference to Abigail Williams. He says this to give the perception that she is not a child, and what he did was not wrong. His anger with the inner conflict builds up and up until it is released when he says "I say God is dead!" (Miller, 111). This shows that this conflict within has made him lose faith, and brought him to the point of not caring what people think of him. So in the end he decides to release his secret.
In Webster's Dictionary, loyalty is defined as the quality or state or an instance of being loyal and loyal is defined as an unswerving in allegiance. In Elizabethan England, loyalty was believed to be the ultimate test of a gentleman's character, that only those who passed this test could be considered the perfect Elizabethan gentleman. Shakespeare believed this too. In, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, loyalty is a very prevalent theme throughout the comedy.
Hinton, Tennyson, and Shakespeare, use honor in their texts, they also include Loyalty. Loyalty and Honor are different things; honor is a high respect of something and loyalty is a strong feeling of support. During The Outsiders, Pony is loyal to Johnny, because Pony went to the church with Johnny. Also during the rumble in the novel, Dally fights for Johnny. During the rumble Dally dies, when Dally pases away, he basically died for Johhny. Tennyson, author of “Charge of the Light Brigade”, shows loyalty in many ways during this poem. The captain of the british soldiers knew he messed up with his order. Since the british only had swords and horses, and the russians had bombs, the british knew they were going to lose. In stanza 2, it says “theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die”. That saying means the soldiers knew they were going to die, but they were going to die of courage, and be known as soldiers who died for their country/being loyal to their country. During Much Ado About Nothing Shakespeare includes a lot of loyalty. For example, Beatrice, Hero’s cousin, stayed loyal to Hero, because they are family. During Act 4 scene 1 everyone thought Hero was a stale because Claudio said she cheated on him, but Beatrice believed Hero, when she said she was not a cheater. Beatrice stayed by her side the whole time, and tried her best to prove Hero was not a stale. Another example of loyalty would also be when Beatrice tells
A very good example of loyalty is serving your country at any cost, if you go to war there is a good chance that you will not come back, but you put that aside just to keep the rest of the country safe. That is the ultimate sign of loyalty when you have to face death. So I think that people of today need to make sure that a word is not used just for simple thing, but the correct thing so young people can understand what the word means. Can the perfect ideal of loyalty ever be achieved? In our times I think that loyalty is almost never achieved, why do I think this? The people of today don't know the proper terminology of a w...
To be a loyal follower, or to betray a tyrant? Throughout The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare loyalty versus betrayal is a major part of the tragic play.
J.RR Tolkien once wrote, “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” Tolkien speaks of the natural human instinct to leave when things get hard. It is easy for people to be loyal until it is no longer convenient for them. However, true loyalty is demonstrated by those who stay through the hard times in someone else’s life. Shakespeare puts a lot of emphasis on loyalty, a central theme in the play. In King Lear, Shakespeare shows that being loyal is admirable because it is more difficult than being treacherous.
Why is it important to be loyal in today’s world? Being loyal is apart of our everyday lives, like it’s being loyal your family, friends or even a relationship.
Loyalty is defined as a strong feeling of support or allegiance. I agree fully with this definition. Being loyal is one of the most important of th...