Term Papers on The Crucible: Characters

Term Paper Title	The Crucible: Characters
# of Words	1434
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.74

The Crucible: Characters

Chetan Patel

     The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller that was first produced in 1953,
is based on the true story of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.  Miller wrote the
play to parallel the situations in the mid-twentieth century of  Alger Hiss,
Owen Latimore, Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, and Senator McCarthy, if only
suggestively.  (Warshow 116) Some characters in the play have specific agendas
carried out by their accusations, and the fact that the play is based on
historical truth makes it even more intriguing.
     The characters in this play are simple, common people.  The accused are
charged and convicted of a crime that is impossible to prove.  The following
witchcraft hysteria takes place in one of America's wholesome, theocratic towns,
which makes the miscarriage of justice such a mystery even today.   The reasons
the villains select the people they do for condemnation are both simple and
clear.  All of the accusers have ulterior motives, such as revenge, greed, and
covering up their own behavior.  Many of the accusers have meddled in witchcraft
themselves, and are therefore doubly to be distrusted.  (Warshow 116)  The court
convicts the victims on the most absurd testimony, and the reader has to wonder
how the judges and the townspeople could let such a charade continue.
     The leading character of the play is John Proctor, a man who often
serves as the only voice of reason in the play.  He had an affair with Abigail
Williams, who later charges his wife with witchcraft.  Proctor is seemingly the
only person who can see through the children's accusations.  The reader sees him
as one of the more "modern" figures in the trials because he is hardheaded,
skeptical, and a voice of common sense. He thinks the girls can be cured of
their "spells" with a good whipping.  (Warshow 114) At the end of the play,
Proctor has to make a choice.  He can either confess to a crime he is innocent
of to save himself from execution, or die proclaiming his innocence.  He ends up
choosing death because a false confession would mean implicating other accused
people, including Rebecca Nurse.  (Rovere 2632)  Proctor feels she is good and
pure, unlike his adulterous self, and does not want to tarnish her good name and
the names of his other innocent friends by implicating them.  (Warshow 117)  By
choosing death, Proctor takes the high road and becomes a true tragic hero.  The
reader feels that his punishment is unjust (especially since the crime of
witchcraft is imagined and unprovable.)   Because the trials take place in a
Christian, American town, the reader must then wonder if anything like this
could happen in his or her own time.  This is particularly true of people who
saw the play when it first came out, in the era of McCarthyism.
     Ann and Thomas Putnam are two instigators of the witchcraft hysteria in
the play. Ann Putnam is the one who first plants the idea that Betty is
bewitched.  Her motivation for lying is obvious; she needs to cover up her own
behavior.  After all, she had sent her daughter to Tituba to conjure up the dead
in order to find out what happened to her dead babies.  She can't have it said
that she, a Christian woman, practices the pagan art with a slave from Barbados,
or that her daughter's illness is her fault because she sent her to participate
in the black art, so she blames others.  (Warshow 113)  Revenge is another
motive of hers.  Tituba's tricks led her to the conclusion that her babies were
murdered while under the care of a midwife, Goody Osburn.  Osburn is later
accused of witchcraft. Ann Putnam's husband also influences her.  (Rovere 2632)
     Thomas Putman had nominated his wife's brother-in-law, James Bayley, to
be the minister of Salem.  He was qualified and the people voted him in, but a
faction stopped his acceptance.  Thomas Putnam felt superior to most people in
the village, and was angry that they rejected his choice for minister.  He was
also involved in a land dispute with Francis Nurse, whose wife Rebecca is
accused of witch...

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