Analyse of the Two Key Moments Essay

Just before this key moment starts, the guards takes Rebecca Nurse out of her cage, on its way to the place where people are hanged. She is astonished that John is confessing. The key moment starts with Proctor refusing to say that he saw Rebecca Nurse in the Devil’s company, or anybody else. Danforth demands that Proctor prove the purity of his soul by accusing others, but Hale advises that it is enough that he confesses himself. Parris agrees, but Danforth demands that Proctor should sign a document. Proctor says that he has confessed to God, and that is enough. He asks Danforth whether a good confession must be public. Proctor wishes to keep only his name, and Danforth thus refuses to accept his confession. Danforth orders Proctor to be hanged. Hale begs Elizabeth to plead with Proctor to sign a confession, but Elizabeth states that Proctor has his goodness now, and God forbid that she take it from him. The characters have turning points in the key moments, and I am going to discuss what happens to Hale, John Proctor and Danforth in this key moment. Hale’s beliefs in witchcraft changes, so does his faith in the law. In Act 4, he tells the accused witches to lie, to confess their supposed sins in order to save their own lives. This change of heart and hopelessness, makes Hale gain the audience’s sympathy but not its respect, since he lacks the moral character of Rebecca Nurse or, and as it turns out at the end of Act 4, John Proctor. Although Hale recognises the evil of the witch trials, his response is not resistance but surrender. He thinks that survival is the highest good, even if it means helping oneself to injustice, which honourable and truly heroic characters can never accept. John Proctor changes himself and provides a final charge of the witch trials. Offered the opportunity to make a confession that he has seen the Devil, he almost surrenders, even signing a confession letter. His great pride and fear of public opinion drove him to hold his truth, adultery, from the court, but by the end of the play he is more concerned with his personal honesty than his public reputation. He still wants to save his name, but for a personal and religious view, rather than the publics’ reasons. Proctor’s refusal to provide a false confession is a true religious and personal determination. His confession would dishonour his friends who are convicted who are brave enough to die as support to the truth. Also it will dishonour himself, staining not just his public reputation, but also his soul. He then decides to change his mind and tells Danforth that he does not want to lie, this bringing him to heaven. He has now redeemed his sin. As Elizabeth says to end the play, responding to Hale’s plea that she convince Proctor to publicly confess: â€Å"He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him! † In this key moment Danforth shows that his greatest interest is to protect the reputation of the court when he prompts Proctor to sign a confession, thus preventing the response of his death. I think that Danforth has changed internally but not externally. I think he believes that the witchcraft is fake, but externally he is still a strict and craving for a good reputation. If he did believe people at the end of the play, then he would not convict John Proctor, but he did because it was to late then, and his reputation would be ruined, as he has convicted people before. It is a crucial moment for the audience because they think Proctor is a bad and not a honourable man when he signs the paper. It is dramatic irony, but not as much. The audience know that Proctor does not see the Devil, to save his life by confessing and showing you don not lie, he says he has been seeing the Devil. But he suddenly changes, he rips the piece of paper representing his confession, and explains that his name is more important, he wants to show he is a heroic man, so he says he never has see the Devil, which is true, and the audience see how he is a better man, and is going to die being an honourable and a heroic man. A crucible is a melting pot, where substances are heated to a high temperature to get rid of impurities. Miller is suggesting the play is like to purge by fire, a form of ‘cleansing’. This is a metaphor for spiritual improvements as the result of a confession being exerted. It is known as ‘cleaning’ or ‘cleansing’ yourself by confessing to seeing the Devil. There is many ways to explain the name of the book and here are some more: first witches supposedly boil potions in cauldrons and a synonym for cauldron is crucible. Secondly, it has a metaphorical meaning: the society of Salem is being heated and stirred in an attempt to remove the impurities and leave only the pure members of the society. One of the central themes of the play is the spiritual development of John Proctor. It is a powerful and complex play. All of the action takes place indoors and it is very black, simplistic and it emphasises the lifestyle of the people and it echoes the claustrophobic atmosphere of the play. The play focuses on ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. In the play Miller is discussing the forces of evil. In the attempt to cut out evil there is certainly a degree of irony. The irony in this play is that evil and tragedy actually occur from the actions of the unwise and over eager characters such as Danforth and Parris and to a certain extent Hale, who became responsible for deaths, misery and cruelty. Miller is suggesting that humans are vulnerable to evil and he aims to show that the evil generated in Salem was through a combination of circumstances for which no one person could be held entirely responsible but yet none were guilt free. The Crucible was based on real events and characters. The people of the 17th Century Salem, witchcraft were a very real and forceful threat. Many people were accused of being witches, and were tortured and executed. The discrimination of witches spread to a lot of places around the world. Witches thought to commit crimes have various ‘proofs’ of a witch including the testimony of a fellow witch, the common belief or accusation of those who live with suspected witch, cursing followed by some mischief or the person disagrees with the person when questioned. Miller was interested in McCarthy trials in the 1940s/50s and made the book parallel to it, Salem witch trials of 1682. Miller may have oversimplified matters, in that while there were no actual witches in Salem, there were certainly Communists in 1950s America. However, one can argue that Miller’s concern in The Crucible is not with whether the accused actually are witches, but rather with the refusal of the court officials to believe that they are not. McCarthyism limits, which wronged many innocents and this parallel was felt strongly in Miller’s own time. In real life, at Millers time, Abigail Williams was 12 years old, but in the play she is 17, but why did he change the age? He did this to make Abigail Williams a better character to make her do all the mischievous things she does in the play. At the age of 17, you are mature and able to make an opinion, and act more like an adult, unlike a 12 year old where you are still to young to do things adults do. Danforth was not a real person, he was made up, but the wonderful thing about him is that he is made up of 3 characters. These three characters were the judges, but they would not be as dramatic and neither strong, unless there is one person who rules, making that character more remembered, and more important to the play.