Michael Kantor
Mr. Smyth
11th Grade ELA/WL CP (Period A)
26 November 2012
A Condemned Man’s Secret to Peace In The Crucible, set in the Puritan village of Salem, John Proctor is a conflicted man of varying emotions, and makes decisions which end up costing him dearly, unlikely for someone who goes out of his way to avoid trouble and being held accountable for it. One basis of Proctor’s guilty conscience is that he has had an affair with Abigail Williams, thus committing adultery because of his relationship with Elizabeth Proctor. Adultery, set is The Crucible, in the Puritan community of Salem, is more than a crime; it is a wrongdoing that has very serious implications and is punishable by death. With this guilty conscience, there are also witchcraft proceedings ongoing in Salem, and Proctor eventually will have to make decisions regarding taking the action that is morally fulfilling and telling the truth about the witchcraft trials to the judges. Although in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, John Proctor’s actions have led to his moral degradations and a heavy conscience, he makes the choices of telling the truth and doing what is right when he admit that he had committed lechery with Abigail, when he brought Mary Warren to the court with him to confess the truth, and by giving up his life in order to keep his name in good standing. Even as it goes against everything John Proctor strives for, he admits his secret to the court, just like he had done earlier with Elizabeth, thus subjecting himself to ridicule and punishment. Proctor admits to the court that he had sex with Abigail when he says, “God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a whore’s vengeance, and you must see it; I set myself entirely in your hands” (Miller 1309). When Proctor said this, he used it as a way of justifying why Abigail would have wanted to get rid of