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Character analysis of john proctor essay
Character analysis of john proctor essay
Character analysis of john proctor essay
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There was many themes displayed throughout “The Crucible” like cowardice, honesty, and greed but one theme overthrows all of them and that’s hunger for power, authority, and respect. The hunger for power is shown the most in this play because many people wanted to keep the power they had. Countless people had shown this but we are only going to talk about Reverend Parris, Abigail, John Proctor, and the Danforth.
Reverend Parris is rigorously obsessed with perpetuate his power because he is a coward. Before the Salam Witch Trials began, he required that he gets more money and things. Once the witchcraft rumors starts, Parris is afraid people will start accusing him and then eventually remove him from his position. He begins blaming others,
In the Crucible there was three characters that stood out from all the other ones in this wicked story. Abigail Williams was a big influence in this story she would lie and lie to get out of things and she was also the leader of the girls in the woods. Furthermore she also had an affair with John Proctor which made John and Elizabeth relationship unstable. Also John Proctor runs into a situation at the end of the story where he is put in the position if he wants his pride of not signing that paper full of lies or die knowing he did the right thing of not lying. Additionally, Elizabeth Proctor has never lied ever until the day John was being prosecuted for his witchcraft and possibly adultery and Elizabeth lied so that his name wouldn't be ruined.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller shows how authority is a characteristic that can easily become a problem throughout a society. Many subjects were addressed in The Crucible such as guilt, hypocrisy, justice, hysteria, and courage. However, the most important subject throughout the play would be the nature of authority. There is a fine line between the concept of having authority and having power. In the book, the authority weakened and led to the antagonist Abigail Williams leading the law as opposed to the law leading Abigail Williams.
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 it's 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 where ever he went';, and calling Reverend Hale in an attempt for self-preservation '….if you trafficked with spirits in the forest I must know it now, for surely my enemies will, and they will ruin me with it.'; This statement says a lot about the character of Reverend Parris: a greedy, power hungry man who is more concerned with his own reputation than the souls of his niece and daughter. He always acts on fear, a fear that he will lose his position of power in the community. Parris does not want the trials to end as a fraud because the scandal of having a lying daughter and niece would end his career in Salem.
The issues of power, that Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, portrays are concerned with, who has the power, the shifts of power that take place and how power can consume people and try to abuse it, for either vengeance, jealously, material gain or sexual desire.
The Crucible: Hysteria and Injustice Thesis Statement: The purpose is to educate and display to the reader the hysteria and injustice that can come from a group of people that thinks it's doing the "right" thing for society in relation to The Crucible by Arthur Miller. I. Introduction: The play is based on the real life witch hunts that occurred in the late 1600's in Salem, Massachusetts. It shows the people's fear of what they felt was the Devil's work and shows how a small group of powerful people wrongly accused and killed many people out of this fear and ignorance.
Reverend Parris is far from being a minister and is not a true spiritual leader because of his greed. In Act II John Proctor claims that when the church was first built, Francis Nurse’s pewter candlesticks were placed upon the alter. But when Parris came, he preached for golden candlesticks for twenty weeks until his demands were met. Frankly, this shows Parris’ greed because he values material possession over preaching about God. A minister’s job is to preach about theology, not demand for superfluous goods. However, Parris is the exception; he is a minister that values material possession more than the God he is supposed to be preaching about. Parris claims that all contributions are under the name of God, but this is clearly fallacious. Reverend Parris is a man who abuses his power as a minister to justify his rule because nobody would dare challenge the leader of a theocracy—anything out of the ordinary in Salem is assumed to be witchcraft, a hangable offense. As a result, he has
As the adolescents wail in their pretentious horror of a fictional bird, Proctor slowly realizes the conformation that Satan has entered Salem. Arthur Miller’s tragic allegory, The Crucible, shows the destruction of sinister Salem in 1692. The protagonist, John Proctor, a damnable farmer, has a lecherous affair with the antagonist, Abigail Williams, an ignorant and covetous juvenile. Satan mixes their interior motives to manufacture a catastrophic concoction. The ingredients of destruction consist of selfishness, immaturity, and corruption. The voracious desires of the natives of Salem lead to their evil and self-indulged intentions.
Throughout The Crucible power is distributed to corrupt, self-interested members of the theocracy. Abigail manages to warp the puritan religion into a method of forcing the community to give her power. John Proctor and Reverend Hale are the most notably outstanding characters in the book with the most honorable motives. Both of them end up being truly selfless in the end. If the characters in this play were not so worried about themselves, the tragic deaths of many innocent men and women would never have occurred.
Parris: "Aye, a dress. And I thought I saw – someone naked running through the trees.” The play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller had very many themes in it. Some of these themes stood out more then others. These themes would be hysteria, reputation, and hypocrisy. These themes were present throughout the entire play, from the beginning till the end. When you think of a Puritan religion you may think of a very good, morally perfect society. This wasn’t the case in Salem, Massachusetts. It was actually the opposite in the play, there was lying, cheating, stealing and just about everything else you wouldn’t want in your society.
Explore Miller’s dramatic presentation and development of the theme of power and authority. Even though The Crucible is not historically correct, nor is it a perfect allegory for anti-Communism, or as a faithful account of the Salem trials, it still stands out as a powerful and timeless depiction of how intolerance, hysteria, power and authority is able to tear a community apart. The most important of these is the nature of power, authority and its costly, and overwhelming results. “But you must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or against it,” says Danforth conceitedly. With this antithesis, Miller sums up the attitude of the authorities towards the witch trials that if one goes against the judgement of the court
The Crucible is a play with many underlying messages and themes. One of which is the idea of power. Power is a very important term in this play in that whoever holds the power, holds the fates of others. The hysteria within Salem has directly effected society. Everything has turned upside down and has gotten distorted. Arthur Miller is telling us that all the power in Salem is given to those who are corrupt and their abuse of it is directly shown through: the actions of Abigail throughout the play, the corruption and desires of Parris, as well as the witch trials held by Judge Danforth.
Vengeance is the main theme of The Crucible. The people of the town of Salem were not united, but instead, distrusted and disliked each other. During the court trials, the girls started accusing certain people that they didn't like of dealing with witchcraft. For example, Abigail Williams couldn't forget John Proctor even though their affair was over. She believed that if his wife, Elizabeth Proctor, was out of the way, Abigail and John would be together again. Therefore, she told everyone that Elizabeth's spirit was trying to kill her and accused Elizabeth of being a witch.
The Crucible film showed more depth about the Salem witch trials. While one reads the play, they can easily get lost. In the film, one can see everything that is happening and can follow along with it. “Reverend Parris’ greed for money and houses” is a way of how the movie shows more depth than the play itself. During the film the audience can see how people really got treated and how serious it was when one got accused of witchcraft. Considering the fact that the play was four acts long, one will be more prone to get lost.
Puritan community. They do everything as a whole and that is what they believe in. In this article it says, “Such an adamantly ridged society, of course imply that any form of individuality will be considered subversive and dangerous” (Bonnet 32). The main cause of this entire process is a combination of individual and social passivity. The character Abigail is out of lust for Proctor and out of jealousy for Elizabeth Proctor which was spoken earlier in the text. In the article, it also approaches that “Every single person can avail himself of the opportunity to weak his own personal vengeance on his neighbor. At the same time that the fallen state of things becomes a social matter, in which even justice is infected by the same process and becomes twisted warped in its turn” (Bonnet 32).
The desire for power and authority has always been a part of the human nature. Today’s society most often use power to dominate one another and fulfill one’s personal intentions, which can affect other people in many ways. Having power and authority is truly gratifying but it is terrifying if abused and used for selfish acts. The play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller is an example to illustrate the consequences of abuse of power. The characters Abigail Williams, Deputy Governor Danforth and Reverend Parris use their power over society by manipulating people and using their authority to fulfill their personal intentions, like material gain, vengeance, maintaining social status and reputation, and attention, which eventually lead into a mass hysteria.