John Proctor in The Crucible Essay Example

John Proctor in The Crucible Essay Example John Proctor in The Crucible Paper John Proctor in The Crucible Paper Essay Topic: The Crucible Arthur Miller was born on October 1915 in New York City. His Family came from Austria and immigrated to America. The 1929 stock market crash, and the economic depression that followed it, ruined the family business so that when the young Miller graduated high school there was no money to send him away to University. So instead, he took various jobs to earn money, including two years at a shipping clerk in an automobile- parts warehouse in Manhattan. He applied to the university of Michigan in 1934 where he studied history and economics, but also taking a course in journalism and playwriting. Arthur Miller has written many successful plays in his lifetime, including All My Sons which opened in 1947 and ran 328 performances on stage. Arthur Miller was inspired to write The Crucible by reading a copy of Marion Starkeys book The Devil in Massachusetts. He believed that The Crucible had relevance to the time the play was written. He believed that the American government was on a witch-hunt to destroy communism because they were scared of the power countries in Asia and the USSR had, which is like the people in Salem, who felt they had to hang witches, because they were scared of the power witches may have. The Crucible is about the true story, of The Salem Witchcraft Trials. This began when a group of adolescent girls did some amateur dabbling in the supernatural in Massachusetts in 1692. The result of the witchcraft trials, ended up with the jails full and 20 people hanged. The inhabitants of Salem believed that the bible had instructed them that all witches should be hanged. The girls included a West Indian slave, Tituba, with her spells and beliefs. Betty Parris, the daughter of the minister, started to behave like a child possessed, lying in a trance and sometimes crawling around like an animal with her cousin, Abigail Williams. This behavior was probably what people would call psychosomatic but in seventeenth- century Salem, the only explanation was that the children were possessed by the Devil. In court the girls were in hysteria as they discovered their power in naming innocent people as accomplices of the Devil. No one could argue with their accusation because the only witnesses to witchcraft were the girls. The only way for someone accused of witchcraft to keep their life, was to make a confession. In naming people, the girls were probably projecting their own guilt on the innocent. One such innocent was Elizabeth Proctor, (John Proctors wife) who was accused by her former maid, Abigail Williams. John Proctor, the main character, called on to denounce his wife, his friends and neighbors and finally himself, he goes through an ordeal by conscience, eventually accepting his own death than make a false confession. When Miller wrote The Crucible, he portrayed John Proctor as a hardworking farmer in his middle thirties. He was even- tempered, with a mind of his own. The character John Proctor is first mentioned to the audience when he is mentioned by Betty Parris in act one, in Reverend Parriss house, when she wakes form her coma like state. Abigail Williams and the others girls are around Betty, talking, about when the groups of girls including themselves were dancing in the woods around a bonfire. Abigail tells Betty that she had told her uncle (Reverend Parris, Bettys Father) all about them dancing, but Betty reveals to the audience that Abigail did more than dance; Betty: You did, you did! You drank a charm to kill John Proctors wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor! This would give the impression to the audience that John Proctor is a popular man, and Abigail may have a crush on him. John Proctor then enters the room and Mary Warren his servant leaps in fright, this would have given an audience the impression that Proctor is quite strict and frightening. Mary: Oh! Im just going home, Mr. Proctor. John Proctors first line is Proctor: Be you foolish Mary Warren? Be you deaf? I forbid you leave the house, did I not? Why shall I pay you? I am looking for you more often than my cows! This gives the dramatic impression that John Proctor is quite harsh and strict. When the other girls leave Proctor and Abigail start talking, Abigail is flirting with Proctor, she says John- I am waiting for you every night. However he replies with Abby I never give you hope to wait for me This shows that Proctor is the one who is trying to end the affair with Abigail, because he knows he has a family. When the girls are blamed from worshiping the Devil Abigail quickly blames Tituba, the West- Indian slave. Parris, goody Putnam and Hale question and threaten Tituba and she begins to name witches. Abigail and the other girls join in the naming. Tituba confesses because of the threats from Parris. You will confess yourself or I will take you out and whip you to death, Tituba! Tituba feared for her life so felt she had to confess.