John And Elizabeth Proctor example essay topic

Arthur Millers famous drama The Crucible, a tale of how accusations and lies ruinously impact a whole community, is very aptly titled. By definition, a crucible is a severe test, and the challenges faced by Millers characters are many. The historical events dramatized in the play reflect how core human values, including truth, justice and love, are tested under life and death conditions. The trials of the characters and the values they hold dearly come when their simple, ordered world ceases to be black and white and easily deciphered, and is turned upside down in the gray shade of ambiguity. A major test in The Crucible is found in how the household of John Proctor responds in situations where hard choices must be made between lies and honor or truth and shame. Early in the drama, it is revealed that Proctor has been unfaithful to his wife, Elizabeth, indulging in an extra-marital affair with a servant girl, Abigail.

Suspecting the affair, Elizabeth dismisses Abigail amid rumor and innuendo, and Proctor confesses to his wife. The value of truth in their marriage is sorely tested when Elizabeth cannot find it within herself to forgive him. As the chain of events surrounding Abigail and the dancing girls in the forest leads to mounting self-protective lies about their activities, many women in the community, including Elizabeth, are accused of the practice of witchcraft. When the magistrate comes to arrest Elizabeth, the charges revolve around a doll made by servant girl Mary Warren and Abigails claim that the doll is Elizabeth devilish instrument of torture. Mary Warrens awakening to the truth about Abigails lies causes her to question her experiences and the oddly vaulted place she holds in the community as one of the bewitched. When Mary cannot withstand the pressure of the taunting girls in the face of her truth, she crumbles.

Even though Proctor realizes that coming forth and confessing to his lechery with Abigail will bring shame and dire consequences upon himself and his family, he steps forward to save the reputation and life of his wife. Proctor calls upon the court to summon his wife to verify his faithlessness, swearing there are them that cannot sing and them that cannot weep-my wife cannot lie. I have paid much to learn it. The irony of his confession of adultery to save his bride comes full circle when she denies his adultery to save him. Ultimately, Proctor chooses to denounce the lie of doing the Devils work, knowing that the choice of truth will mean his death. The value of justice in the ordered society of Salem is also put to the test.

When Betty Parris, the daughter of the self-serving Reverend Parris, falls ill, the whole countrys talkin witchcraft. Parris, to save his tenuous position as minister of the flock, calls in an expert in expelling demons, the Reverend John Hale. Reverend Hale is an intellectual, full of desire to put to practice the tools he possesses that are weighted with authority. As Reverend Hale responds to the pleas of parents to intervene on behalf of their daughters, the deceit of Abigail and the dancing girls takes on a life of its own, resulting in the formation of a tribunal to judge the implicated witches. The reverend finds himself caught up in a system of justice where confessions of consorting with the Devil are rewarded with forgiveness and life, while denial of impurity and witchcraft are harshly punished with death. Repeatedly, he tries to assert the value of justice, protesting that Elizabeth Proctor is unjustly arrested and advocating that her husband be allowed a lawyer.

I may shut my conscience to it no more, he cries as the court turns their focus on Proctor, and eventually he leaves the court in the name of justice. The test of Reverend Hales sense of justice later takes an ironic turn, when he returns to minister to the condemned. As he upholds the value he places on justice, he supports Proctors ultimate decision to die an honest man. In the drama, the value of love is also challenged. The love that John and Elizabeth Proctor have is first put to the test by Proctors infidelity and later as they try to uphold their values as their community succumbs to the hysteria of the accusations of witchcraft. They struggle to heal and maintain their marriage as they care for their farm and children and to help their friends and neighbors who are falsely accused and at risk of death as Salem is swept with paranoia.

As Proctor and Elizabeth take bold steps to speak up for what is right and true for their community, their best qualities come to the forefront and they come to recognize all that is good and enduring about their love. In their final moments together, when political pressures have taken such a turn that the court finds it expedient to come up with a way to spare Proctors life, the imprisoned, pregnant Elizabeth is asked to persuade her husband to confess to consorting with the Devil so that he may live. As they agonize over the desperate choices facing them, Elizabeth tells him let none be your judge. There be no higher judge under Heaven than Proctor is! ... I never knew such goodness in the world!

Proctor at first chooses life, for her and their children, but cannot bear the sacrifice of his soul to the lie. Her love for him and respect for his basic need to be true to himself and his values gives him permission to choose to die an honest man. Throughout the drama, The Crucible, the characters are faced with chilling choices as they maneuver through a world that has lost its moral compass. The crucibles, the serious tests, of their dearly held values put them in the position of having to figure out what is right and true in a world turned upside down. The value of truth is tested when lies are rewarded and truth brings suffering, shame and the scaffold of the gallows. The value of justice is challenged by a system that comes to be based on coerced confessions, unsubstantiated charges and self-serving political scheming.

The value of love, be it of husband and wife or of friends and community, is put to the test where true love is exemplified by fatal choices.