Premium Essay

Examples Of Heroism In The Crucible

Submitted By
Words 1050
Pages 5
The Crucible is a tragic story, one of unjustified deaths and malicious lies. People died standing up for what they believed in, and according to the story, one of those people was John Proctor. However, he wasn’t the courageous individual who wanted to save the lives of others. He had something else in mind, his own reputation. John Proctor died to save his own reputation in his town. He chose to die rather than live with his pregnant wife and children, just to avoid losing his good name. As the story was spun, John Proctor was supposed to appear as a tragic hero, however this is not the case. John Proctor’s actions were driven by guilt, selfishness and arrogance, not because of heroism. Although John Proctor's death was not warranted, he …show more content…
His life was not particularly as pure as the puritan society desired. The many mistakes he made leading up to his death were as a result of his own decisions, which is why it is argued that John Proctor did have a tragic flaw. One of John Proctor’s biggest sins was having an affair with Abigail Williams, which he eventually admitted to. This inevitably unraveled the whole story, and heavily weighed into the reason for his death. Had he not had a relationship with Abigail, Elizabeth Proctor would had never been accused of witchcraft. The act of adultery however, is not a tragic flaw. A flaw is a mere imperfection, not an act whose punishment was often death. When John Proctor cheated on his wife with Abigail Williams, it was not because of a flaw in his personality, rather a decision that he knowingly and voluntarily made. Knowingly causing pain and suffering to your wife by committing adultery is not a flaw, it’s a decision. The only reason that John Proctor ending up dying was because of his own decisions, not because a small flaw or imperfection in his …show more content…
His actions to save Elizabeth were out of guilt after realizing that he got her into that situation. A hero is someone that is selfless and acts to protect others. Even though John did attempt to save Elizabeth, it was not because of his courageous disposition, but just because a feeling of obligation. The puritans’ ways of punishing people for being a “witch” was not justified in any way, and John Proctor dying for being accused of witchcraft was a cruel punishment, however his punishment did not exceed anyone else's who were accused of the same thing. Choosing death over life should not even be a question, especially when you have a family to support. John allowed his death to occur, only for his own benefit. Granted, dying was not anyone’s preferential option, John was too selfish for his own reputation, which is not the act of a hero. Even after Elizabeth asked him to consider confessing to witchcraft, he eventually refused to have his name put on the church doors to show that he confessed. John said to Danforth, “How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” When presented with the option to live the rest of his life free and with his family, John was too caught up in his own reputation. He admitted that what he did was wrong, however this does not make him a hero. His selfish ways show that his actions during the story were for his own

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Examples Of Heroism In The Crucible

...John Proctor the Hero A person who is admired for their good deeds or actions would be considered a hero. One can receive huge amounts of respect from others because they are a hero. In the story The Crucible by Arthur Miller, John Proctor could be considered a hero due to his loyalty in his faith and for ending the executions of innocent people that are accused of being a witch. Heroes aren’t usually perfect; they usually had done something bad that no one really knows about. They don’t always survive through their acts of heroism or live to tell the story. A hero always has some enemies that try to get rid of him or her and sometimes even are successful. In the beginning of The Crucible, Arthur Miller portraits John Proctor as a common...

Words: 940 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Similarities Between The Crucible And Animal Farm

..."…. A person is either with this court or they must be counted against it." How do both texts show us that there is little room for justice in an oppressive society? Injustice is often a result of oppression as absolutist societies establish a dichotomy of good and evil to manipulate the powerless into subservience. The allegories by George Orwell and Arthur Miller denounce the harmful effects of tyranny, as it generates deception and fear, enabling despotic individuals to gain power and control. Miller’s play, The Crucible, advocates for the necessity of transgression to gain autonomy, as Salem’s theocracy is eventually broken; however, it is Orwell’s novella, Animal Farm, that exposes the unjust reality in which rebellion does not always guarantee freedom,...

Words: 1688 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

The Civilizing Process and the Domestication of Fire

...The Civilizing Process and the Domestication of Fire* johan goudsblom University of Amsterdam In the two volumes of The Civilizing Process (first published in German in 1939, and in English in 1982) Norbert Elias studied changes in manners, society, and personality in western Europe over the period roughly from 850 to 1850. The documentary evidence upon which he based his argument was mainly derived from the second half of this period, from 1350 to 1850. The purpose of the study was to arrive at a better understanding of the contemporary world, and of its social and psychological problems.1 Now, by any conventional standards the period from 1350 to 1850, not to speak of the millennium from 850 to 1850, is a very long time. Yet, when we take into account the full history of human civilization, it is short: an episode, no more. Consequently, since Elias’s focus was upon the changes that have taken place in western Europe since 1350, certain underlying patterns in human history had to remain in the background. Elias himself was aware of this, and in later writings he 1 Journal of World History, Vol. 3, No. 1 © 1992 by University of Hawai‘i Press *This is the slightly abridged text of the first Norbert Elias lecture, delivered at the University of Leicester on 6 March 1991. 1 For further information on the book and its background, see Stephen Mennel, Norbert Elias: Civilization and the Human Self-Image (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). See also Hermann Korte...

Words: 4711 - Pages: 19

Premium Essay

Leadership for the 21st Century

...RENAISSANCE LEADERSHIP Transforming Leadership for the 21st Century J. Martin Hays and Choule Youn Kim THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Key Words: |Leadership |Management Education |Future Trends | |Leadership Development |The New Millennium |Leadership Competencies | ABSTRACT Conventional leaders and leadership of the past are insufficient to meet the demands of the 21st Century. As we enter the new millennium, our world is characterised by unprecedented complexity, paradox, and unpredictability. Change is rapid and relentless. Today’s leaders face demands unlike any ever before faced. Standard leadership approaches that have served us well throughout much of history are quickly becoming liabilities. Conventional wisdom regarding leadership and many of its habits must be unlearned. The strong, decisive, charismatic, and independent leader and leadership we have idealised, strived to be, depended upon, and longed for may prove counter-productive in the new millennium and undermine a sustainable future. The challenges and opportunities of the 21st Century call for a new type of leader and leadership, indeed an entirely new and different way of thinking about leadership and of developing future leaders. This paper explores the nature of the nascent millennium and the leader and leadership qualities and capabilities...

Words: 43745 - Pages: 175

Free Essay

The Trouble with Wilderness

...The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature William Cronon This will seem a heretical claim to many environmentalists, since the idea of wilderness has for decades been a fundamental tenet-indeed, a passionof the environmental movement, especially in the United States. For many Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness. Seen in this way, wilderness presents itself as the best antidote to our human selves, a refuge we must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet. As Henry David Thoreau once famously declared, “In Wildness is the preservation of the World.“’ But is it? The more one knows of its peculiar history, the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation-indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it is a product of that civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made...

Words: 11026 - Pages: 45

Free Essay

Essay on Forms

...“You will know them by their fruits.” Mt. 7:16 CHRISTIAN PURITY By Randolph Sinks Foster FOREWORD The past generation produced some outstanding leaders and writers among the advocates of the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification. The writings of these authors are of such high rank and their value has been so tested by time that today their books are worthy to be recognized as classics in this field of religious literature. That these writings, all of which are now out of print, may be preserved and made available to the people of the holiness movement today, the publishers are presenting this series of Abridged Holiness Classics. The abridged message is that of the original author from which has been deleted material mostly applicable to the previous generation. The man called upon to undertake the task of abridgment for the first four volumes in the series is the Rev. John Paul, who is well known as a Bible scholar and as an authoritative preacher and teacher of the doctrine of entire sanctification. That Doctor Paul has done an admirable work will be recognized by the reader of this series which starts with the following titles: “Purity and Maturity,” and “Perfect Love,” by J. A. Wood; “Possibilities of Grace,” by Asbury Lowrey; “Christian Purity,” by Bishop Foster. It is the sincere prayer of the publishers that these classics in abridged form will be the blessing to the readers of this generation that they were to the generation to which they were written originally...

Words: 30530 - Pages: 123

Free Essay

Its Better to Have Brains Than Beauty

...INTRODUCTION The plays and prefaces of Bernard Shaw deal with many and diverse themes. At least four, however, concern themselves with evolutionary themes and ideas: Man and Superman, Back to Methusalah, The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, and Far-fetched Fables. In Man and Superman, especially the third act, the preface, and The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion, Shaw touches on two main themes: the pursuit of man by woman and the direction of evolution, which Shaw sees as leading towards the development of the mind and brain. In Back to Methusalah, Shaw carries forward his vision of evolution as proceeding in the direction of mental development but introduces a seemingly new idea in the last play of the cycle, the antithesis of mind and body. Shaw's dualism receives its most explicit statement in the last play of the cycle although there may be indications of it in the earlier plays. The mind-body antithesis, however, derives as a philosophical problem from Descartes,1 although the antithesis also appeared in the Manichean and Gnostic heresies, the spirit, or mind, being regarded as good and the body as evil. Although the antithesis of body and mind makes its first open appearance in the Methusalah cycle, it is present, at least as an implicit assumption in Man and Superman. Don Juan continually expresses his longing for the life of contemplation, a life which is to be achieved at the expense of the body. We will deal with the presence of the mind body antithesis...

Words: 49397 - Pages: 198

Premium Essay

Rastafarian

...Rastafari This page intentionally left blank Rastafari From Outcasts to Culture Bearers Ennis Barrington Edmonds 2003 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Copyright © 2003 by Ennis Barrington Edmonds The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Edmonds...

Words: 79520 - Pages: 319

Free Essay

Kieser

...111. PI.Is.III111.rsflllll M. Phenomenon Keirsey and Bates's Please Understand Me, first published in 1978, sold nearly 2 million copies in its first 20 years, becoming a perennial best seller ~ll ov~r ~he world. Advertised only by word of mouth, the book became a favo~te tralmng and counseling guide in many institutions-government, church, buslnes.s-and colleges across the nation adopted it as an auxiliary text in a dozen dIfferent departments. Why? Perhaps it was the user-friendly way that Please Understand Me helped people find their personality style. Perhaps it was the simple accuracy of Keirsey's portraits of temperament and character types. Or perhaps it was the book's essential messag~: that members of families and institutions are OK, even though they are fundamentally different from each other, and that they would all do well to appreciate their differences and give up trying to change others into copies of themselves. Now: P"IS' IllIIrstalllll H For the past twenty years Professor Keirsey has continued to investigate personality differences-to refine his theory of the four temperaments and to define the facets of character that distinguish one from another. His findings form the basis of Please Understand Me II, an updated and greatly expanded edition of the book, far more comprehensive and coherent than the original, and yet with much of the same easy accessibility. One major addition is Keirsey's view of how the temperaments differ in the intelligent roles they...

Words: 35927 - Pages: 144

Free Essay

Longman

...Instructor’s Manual to Accompany The Longman Writer Rhetoric, Reader, Handbook Fifth Edition and The Longman Writer Rhetoric and Reader Fifth Edition Brief Edition Judith Nadell Linda McMeniman Rowan University John Langan Atlantic Cape Community College Prepared by: Eliza A. Comodromos Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New York San Francisco Boston London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore Madrid Mexico City Munich Paris Cape Town Hong Kong Montreal NOTE REGARDING WEBSITES AND PASSWORDS: If you need a password to access instructor supplements on a Longman book-specific website, please use the following information: Username: Password: awlbook adopt Senior Acquisitions Editor: Joseph Opiela Senior Supplements Editor: Donna Campion Electronic Page Makeup: Big Color Systems, Inc. Instructor’s Manual to accompany The Longman Writer: Rhetoric, Reader, Handbook, 5e and The Longman Writer: Rhetoric and Reader, Brief Edition, 5e, by Nadell/McMeniman/Langan and Comodromos Copyright ©2003 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Instructors may reproduce portions of this book for classroom use only. All other reproductions are strictly prohibited without prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please visit our website at: http://www.ablongman.com ISBN: 0-321-13157-6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 - D O H - 05 04 03 02 CONTENTS ...

Words: 78100 - Pages: 313

Free Essay

Football, Violence and Social Identity

...Social and cultural analysts have only recently started to investigate the wide variety of customs, values and social patterns that surround the game in different societies. This volume contributes to the widening focus of research by presenting new data and explanations of football-related violence. Episodes of violence associated with football are relatively infrequent, but the occasional violent events which attract great media attention have their roots in the rituals of the matches, the loyalties and identities of players and crowds and the wider cultures and politics of the host societies. This book provides a unique cross-national examination of patterns of order and conflict surrounding football matches from this perspective with examples provided by expert contributors from Scotland, England, Norway, the Netherlands, Italy, Argentina and the USA. This book will be of interest to an international readership of informed soccer and sport enthusiasts and students of sport, leisure, society, deviance and culture. Richard Giulianotti, Norman Bonney and Mike Hepworth are respectively Research Assistant, Senior Lecturer and Reader in the Department of Sociology, Aberdeen University, Scotland. Football, Violence and Social Identity Edited by Downloaded by [University of Ottawa] at 14:44 24 March 2014 Richard Giulianotti, Norman Bonney and Mike Hepworth London and New York First published 1994 by Routledge 11 New...

Words: 73490 - Pages: 294

Free Essay

My Adventures with God

...Adventures with God Real Life Inspirational Stories 37 Allan David Weatherall Contents Introduction:.......................................................................................... i Chapter 1: Random Acts of Kindness....................................................1 Chapter 2: What is Eritrea? . ............................................................... 4 Chapter 3: The Power of Faith & Hope ............................................. 11 Chapter 4: Hey, Chuck Norris! . ........................................................ 14 Chapter 5: We’ve Been Expecting You! ............................................ 18 Chapter 6: On the Road to Jerusalem ................................................ 24 Chapter 7: Jerusalem . ........................................................................ 28 Chapter 8: But, I’m not a Catholic .................................................... 32 Chapter 9: America... here I come ...................................................... 37 Chapter 10: My Friend, John . ............................................................41 Chapter 11: Finding God in the Storm . ............................................ 45 Chapter 12: Trusting God in the War Zone ...................................... 49 Chapter 13: Jahzal . ............................................................................ 52 Chapter 14: The Steadfast Faithfulness of God ................................. 57 Chapter 15: Confrontational Love in the...

Words: 28698 - Pages: 115

Free Essay

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

...Chapter One A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic gooseflesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables. "And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room." Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately...

Words: 64884 - Pages: 260

Premium Essay

Reading a Novel in 1950-2000

...Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 i RTNA01 1 13/6/05, 5:28 PM READING THE NOVEL General Editor: Daniel R. Schwarz The aim of this series is to provide practical introductions to reading the novel in both the British and Irish, and the American traditions. Published Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890–1930 Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 Daniel R. Schwarz Brian W. Shaffer Forthcoming Reading the Eighteenth-Century Novel Paula R. Backscheider Reading the Nineteenth-Century Novel Harry E. Shaw and Alison Case Reading the American Novel 1780–1865 Shirley Samuels Reading the American Novel 1865–1914 G. R. Thompson Reading the Twentieth-Century American Novel James Phelan ii RTNA01 2 13/6/05, 5:28 PM Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 Brian W. Shaffer iii RTNA01 3 13/6/05, 5:28 PM © 2006 by Brian W. Shaffer BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Brian W. Shaffer to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and...

Words: 123617 - Pages: 495

Free Essay

Sssdsss

...Readings for American History Since 1877 Historiography in America...................................................................................................................................................... 2 How to teach history (and how not to) ................................................................................................................................ 6 How Ignorant Are Americans? ........................................................................................................................................... 9 The West ............................................................................................................................................................................... 11 The Education of Native Americans ................................................................................................................................. 11 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee .................................................................................................................................... 15 Prostitution in the West: .................................................................................................................................................... 17 The Gilded Age ..................................................................................................................................................................... 21 The Duties of American Citizenship ...........................

Words: 77768 - Pages: 312