More handpicked essays just for you.
The Crucible Act 2: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
Character and characterisation of the crucible
Character and characterisation of the crucible
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Miller shows the greatest transformation in reverend Hale and reverend Parris in order to convey the idea that theocracies are dangerous and easily corruptible. Hale and Parris notice this and try to save the citizens from their own corrupt court that is killing beloved citizens. In this they have to plead that they break the rule to lie that of which is a sin in Salam. In The Crucible, young girls corrupt the court by lying and claiming to have returned to god from the devil. The church must believe them and with this they accuse anyone that stands in their way with witchcraft and the church follows them. After this no one wants to disgrace their name by confessing they are in contact with the devil and the court is too proud to confess of being corrupt by girls. …show more content…
When Mr.
Hale first enters salam he is proud and confident in his ability to find and eradicate witchcraft where he believe he’s found it. “In these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises” (Hale 37). He claims to be able save anyone from the supposed witchcraft taking hold in this town. As more truths are uncovered Hale begins to question his beliefs and if the witchcraft he came to extinguish was really their at all. When people were questioning why they were accused and were genuinely confused. Hale picked up on people not knowing why or how they were accused, but he had to follow through with who were to be accused of being guilty until proven innocent. When Mary Warren I confessing that she had lied and had never seen the Devil and that none of them had. Hale is just starting to take them seriously that maybe they were falsely accusing people. That’s why by the end of the book (Act 4) he is in their cells asking them to lie because he has noticed that they were just lying. He believed that he should not have held the power to sign all their deaths because of his ideas. His ideas took control of him and with the power of the state used those ideas to sign death
papers. When Reverend Parris finds suspected witchcraft he doesn’t want to report it with him not wanting corruption in his church get out into the village. He is a proud and stern man that shows little weakness. Throughout the book Parris he is working at the side of Hale, but he is never given the power in court that Hale is. Through the court trials Parris works as more of an understudy helping Hale with research and passing messages from the court. When Hale reaches the idea that he has to save the people accused with lies, Parris is down in the dungeon helping believing and trying to save what has become of rampant ideas. Parris saw that theocracy was not going to work and that he was no longer accepted so he left back to his old life. The court in Salem also admits to not work with the supposed idea that there are witches in the village, but Hathorne will not make any acceptions and counties with the signed executions. Hathorne is a cold man that seems to show very little emotion except when proctor is confessing. Hathorne tries to side with the girls so he can’t be proved that he trusted lying little girls. He dismisses all attempts to try and uproot the claims of the girls is corrupting the court. He is making it so that their are only accusers and no defendants, then must succumb to what they were accused to doing to survive. In conclusion theocracies are dangerous because from examples from the book they allow for anyone that has a claim to have to be believed because of not being allowed to lie. So they the ones that didn’t have any power now have to power to accuse anyone in their way of power. It’s also didn’t help that the court (Hathorne) was too proud to be tricked by little girls and wouldn’t admit to being tricked. Theocracies don’t really work in court with one or many religions at all since everyone has different motives. Parris and hale saw the cracks and holes that had come before them from the girls being clean and the good people being with the devil. Salem in the end had been greatly corrupt but they were too proud to solve it.
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
We have all heard the tales and seen the movies of evil witches cooking little kids up for supper. For the people of salem in 1692-1693 this was a reality. In the matter of less than a year more than two hundred people were accused of witchcraft and more than twenty were executed. In these historic events author Arthur Miller wrote a play about the people and events in this play there is a man, Reverend Hale is well versed in the study of witchcraft and has come to try and save the girls that have been gripped by the Devil. Miller has Hale change very much throughout the event of this play. In the beginning he believes that the Devil is at work in Salem, how ever near the climactic ending of this play he realises that this witch talk has gotten completely out of hand
" 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.
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 does not start out as such however. In fact he is the reason the witch hunts are started. In the beginning of the play Hale is called to Salem to determine whether or not witchcraft is afoot. Witchcraft is expertise, and Hale, eager and naïve, wants to determine whether or not the devil is in Salem. His analysis is that Tituba is controlling the girls’ souls, leading the girls, starting with Abigail of course, to shout out various people they saw convening with the devil while they were under the control of Tituba. Hale, blindly and unquestioningly conforms to the rest of the town and believes the girls. In fact he leads the way, resulting in fourteen arrests. He is completely unphased by this, and wholly believes that they are all witches and that by arresting them he is doing God’s work.
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
As Reverend John Hale is not a resident of Salem, he approaches the accusations and rumors without any prior opinion. Hale is introduced as extremely arrogant and proud with his goal being “light, goodness and its preservation”(Miller 34). This phrasing strengthens his role as a man of God, but this is not actually displayed in his personality until later. He is very book smart and this leads to some signs of immaturity. This is shown in Act I when Parris questions why the devil would come to Salem. “Why would he [the devil] choose this house to strike?”(39) In response Hale says, “It is the best the Devil wants, and who is better than the minister?”(39) This shows he enjoys the position better than he does its purpose. He is also very eager.
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.
Because he is forced to accept that his beliefs have been messed with and realizes that he has sent people to their deaths, he loses faith in the law and questions his faith in God. Arthur Miller put many events into the story and tells about Hale’s mindset. In the middle of Act I, Hale comes and what he is called by the townspeople “The truth seeker”. Hale is called upon to determine what sort of witchcraft is going on. Hale arrives admired by the people who wants him to calm this nonsense of witchcraft down. He understands he being led toward the conclusion of witchcraft by the town’s wrong doings. He also begins to see a weakness in the position of the townspeople of Salem and tries to not let common things be the support for his
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 '….
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.
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.
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.
The Crucible is an incredibly influential play no only in the fact that it displays many important themes, but it also portrays how a theocracy impacts societal actions. The Salem witch trials were the culmination of the problems with theocracy. The actions of society, not only are impacted by their personal thoughts, but also in religious undertones affect them. Act two in the play portrays not only all of these themes, but also some important events leading towards the witchcraft hysteria. Act two in the play portrays how theocracy ultimately leads to chaos.