The Tragic Hero That Was Mr. Proctor Essay

The Tragic Hero That Was Mr. Proctor Essay

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The Tragic Hero That Was Mr. Proctor
Mr. Proctor, a main character in the play The Crucible, is very important in understanding and analyzing of the story. Throughout his time in the play, the audience came to know and love him. However, because of his disgraceful actions with another woman, among other things, he ended up in the hangman’s noose. This is the analysis of how Mr. Proctor became this well-known tragic hero. Among the things that will be discussed: his affair with Abigail Williams, his wife, his fatal flaw, and fate/external forces.
First, his fornification with another woman which goes against Elizabeth Proctor, his beloved and truthful wife, helps lead to his demise. John Proctor, a very admirable man in the town, fell to the clutches of an evil young woman who helped around his house, Abigail Williams. They had an affair which only they knew of, until Mrs. Proctor found out. Furthermore, Abigail Williams created more problems when she and some other girls in the town went into the woods with Tituba and danced, which was a forbidden sport in the time and place in which they lived. In Salem, a modest Puritan town on the east coast of the U.S. in the state of Massachusetts founded in 1626, dancing was considered horse play and a sin. At this fiasco in the woods outside of Salem one of the girls also danced naked, and Abigail drank blood. Her rationale behind this was to use a spell, which Tituba helped her with, to kill Elizabeth Proctor. This way she could marry the widowed John Proctor, whom she loved. All of these occurrences, except the affair, were then discovered by Parris, the town’s local minister. This is exemplified when Parris says, “And what shall I say to them? That my daughter and my niece I discovered...

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...verend Hale in the play saw the accusations and condemnations as valid, while John was one character who could see everything before him and could tell it was all lies, acting, and foul play. He could see through the veil the girls had pulled over the town of Salem, when others could not. For this reason he may have been singled out as a threat and an oddball in the story.
To conclude, John Proctor’s role as a tragic hero is a prominent one. He is an unfortunate example of how someone can be in the wrong place at the wrong time and die for being convicted guilty, even though he was an innocent man. When discussing John Proctor, it is impossible not to mention the topics discussed within this paper: his affair with another woman, his wife, his fatal flaw, and fate and external forces. These are the ways in which Arthur Miller has defined Mr. Proctor as a tragic hero.

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