John Proctor Struggles In The Crucible

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Frederick Douglass once said “Without a struggle, there can be no progress.” This says a lot about our society. We constantly have to work to prove our excellence in something that we want to succeed in. In Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, struggle is something that many characters experience. John Proctor, for example, is one of those characters. He can’t progress in something that he is truly right about unless he drudges for it for some time. John Proctor is a man with conflicting thoughts and actions, hidden behind a facade that people admire and respect, but in order to save his wife, he must humble himself, confess his doing, and bare the shameful truth.
It all began before the play started when Proctor had an affair with Abigail. …show more content…
He negotiates with the judges for Elizabeth’s freedom because she said that she was pregnant. John Proctor didn’t accept the offer because he wanted to help his friends and their wives. John could’ve easily saved 2 lives by accepting the offer, but he decided to be a “helpful friend.” Because he wants to “help” everyone, he gets to the point to where he is desperate. This is where he truly reveals his dark insides and his secret affair that only Abigail and Elizabeth knew. “God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat” (Miller 1206). When Judge Hathorne decides to test this testimony he asks Elizabeth to be brought out to ask her some questions. “To your own knowledge, has John Proctor ever committed the crime of lechery” (Miller 1208). In order to protect her husband, she asserts that John hasn’t done anything wrong. Because Elizabeth said that, Proctor's testimony becomes false and everything goes downhill for the Proctors from this point. John gets upset with his wife and he almost yells in court at her for not saying the truth. This also tells us that Elizabeth is a very resilient woman. She could’ve left John but she decided to stay with him because she loves
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