We see John making a determined effort to please Elizabeth -- he kisses her perfunctorily, he praises her cooking -- all this being done in a desperate effort to compensate for his guilty feelings. Elizabeth's coldness, however, augments his failure. Once her love has been betrayed, she lives in a continuous suspicion and doubts John's reasons as to why he would not testify against his former lover, Abigail, when Elizabeth urges him to. She is proud, slow to forgive and very accusatory: "I cannot speak but I am doubted," John defends himself, "every moment judged for lies, as though I come into a court when I come into this house!" (The Crucible, 54) Nevertheless, in spite of her self-righteous and her seemingly intolerant posture, Elizabeth loves John. She proves her endless love for him in Act Three when she lies to the committee of the court, against her principles, denying her husband's deed of adultery to save his reputation and life. At the end, Elizabeth overcomes her pride, becomes more open-minded and is able to forgive John. She even goes as far as taking part of the guilt upon herself, admitting that she was not as good a wife as she could have: "I have read my heart this three-month, John... I have sins of my own to count. It needs a cold wife to prompt lechery," (The Crucible, 137) Elizabeth confesses to her husband. We see her, thus, at the end of the play fully developed. John Proctor grows in stature, as well, throughout the play. Although at the beginning John seems to play indifferent to the town's problems and to refuse to be involved in these absurd charges of witchcraft, when Abigail denounces his wife to be a witch, he gets involved without a hint of hesitation and takes immediate action, attempting legally to rescue the accused even if that would imply public exposure: "My wife...
that goodness will not die for me!" (The Crucible, 80) he tells her servant, Mary Warren, whom he convinces to confess the truth and testify against Abigail.
Crucible Dearest John, I am writing this letter in the hopes that I can explain myself and make you understand why I have done what I did. You are angry with me now and perhaps I deserve your anger, but you must know in your heart that your wife stood between us. We never could have been together so long as someone else called herself Mrs. John Proctor. That is a
It becomes his way of escaping reality. The boundaries between the past and the present are withdrawn in his fantasies, where his illusions become real. But the truth is that the family is in severe financial condition and, in the end, Willy decides to commit suicide by driving and crashing himself to death so that his insurance money could be used to establish a business for his eldest son,
Most of the American public did not know what communism or Marxism really was as an ideology, they simply knew that it was 'bad' and it was 'un-American,' although logically it could be argued that nothing is more un-American than prosecuting a person for holding certain political beliefs. The tragedies of Miller's "The Crucible" and the McCarthy hearings are that good men and women, as well as fearful and ignorant
While he resists coming completely clean and exposing his affair, he eventually tells the whole truth, but only after the town is in chaos. The climax of The Crucible occurs toward the end of the play when Mary accuses Proctor of being a witch and he is summarily arrested. Prior to this the action builds as several girls in the play get caught up in the witch hysteria. Proctor's arrest
Hale begins the play as the most idealistic character, but ends the play telling Proctor to lie under oath and confess to being a witch, after Proctor is accused by Abigail. Hale comes to see the judicial system as bankrupt. This shows how a corrupt system can corrupt even decent people. The system also uses Hale's idealism for its own ends, as pro-democracy, pro-American people were used in subservience
Indeed, the arrival of Hale, the specialist on witchcraft, brings with it a gloomy sense of foreboding. With the sentence of death being the outcome to such proceedings, I am moved by the remarkable errant authority. Act III: The courtroom drama in this act is compelling if a little overstated. Here, the genuine hysteria has set in and the outrageous turnabout between first Mary and John toward Abigail and ultimately, Mary and Abigail toward John demonstrates
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