GCSE English Directors Notes on Act 4 of The Crucible by Arthur Miller

The first step for Proctor to regain his self-respect is when he goes to the court armed with three main weapons in order to free his wife, Abigail’s admission to him that there was no witchcraft, Mary Warren’s testimony and finally, Proctor is prepared to admit that he and Abigail had an affair. This would blacken Abigail’s now saintly reputation and discredit her in the eyes of the court. Even though Proctor’s goal of freeing Elizabeth and putting an end to the hysteria is not achieved, he takes significant steps towards regaining his self-respect. The first step being that he does not stop fighting the false accusations even after he finds out that Elizabeth is pregnant and therefore safe for the time being. He feels he owes a greater duty to the community and proceeds. The second step is that he has now just openly admitted his adulterous lechery; he is no longer a hypocrite. He has publicly embraced his sin.

“The relationship between John proctor and his wife is not an easy one” Through close analysis of three scenes discuss Miller’s dramatic presentation of the relationship and how the audience respond to it. Draft

This speech shows that Proctor is blaming himself for this tragedy. Proctor's guilt still continues about his affair with Abigail and he is also now guilty for hesitating to act earlier.

Despite his being an insignificant and non-status-holding member of society, John Proctor is a much-respected man in Salem. However, in determining his fate, he continues to make several critical and irreversible mistakes that harm his reputation. For fear of being exiled in a town where reputation plays such a large role in their daily lives, Proctor initially tries to hide his crime of adultery, but his affair with Abigail triggers a major series of events in Salem, where simple, unproven accusations escalate to a far larger issue: “Abby—you mean to cry out still others?” “If I live, if I am not murdered, I surely will, until the last hypocrite is dead” (Miller 150). In the end, Proctor decides that for the sake of his desperate circumstances, it would be better to admit to his affair, but by the time he decides to reveal his crime, it is too late to reverse all past actions. He is convicted of witchcraft and doomed to be hanged, later, when given a chance to live, he caves in and confesses to seeing the Devil, only to go back even on this last lie, because he does not have the heart to be freed and saved by a lie.

John Proctor is, arguably, the main character of the play. The Proctor that is presented to the readers at the beginning is not the same Proctor that is seen when the curtains drop for the last time. For example, Proctor states, "My honesty is broke, Elizabeth; I am no good man. Nothing spoiled by giving them this lie that were not rotten long before."(Miller 535). Proctor sees himself as evil, so what can one worse thing possibly do to him? This is the mindset that Proctor takes on for most the play, for so long that the reader begins to believe that he will never change. But something happens that does change Proctor; here he states, "You have made your magic now, for now I do see the goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs."(Miller 539). Proctor changed significantly, he recognizes the good in himself and becomes at peace. Proctor's whole mindset is switched around in only a few pages. Circumstances and traumatic

The Crucible, a historical play based on events of the Salem witchcraft trials, takes place in a small Puritan village in the colony of Massachusetts in 1692. The witchcraft trials, as Miller explains in a prose prologue to the play, grew out of the particular moral system of the Puritans, which promoted interference in others' affairs as well as a repressive code of conduct that frowned on any diversion from norms of behavior.

The witch trials in this play were based on actual events that happened in Salem in 1692. Arthur Miller’s 1953 The Crucible is a dramatization of the Salem Witch Trials. His reasoning for writing it was because everyone was hysteric about the Soviet Union and communism trying to make its way over to the United States. It was like a modern day witch hunt. In the play, Abigail Williams and a group of girls get caught in the woods. They were dancing and doing other things that puritan’s looked down upon. The girls were caught by Reverend Parris, and soon after his daughter became ‘ill’. The girls then started saying that witches came to them and told them to do bad things. They sent innocent people to hang. After studying Arthur Miller’s

Throughout the play, Proctor struggles with his honor as he changes from viewing it as his reputation to believing it is based on his own private moral of truth. The isolated Puritan community in which Proctor lives forces him to try and achieve a pious and perfect lifestyle, which ultimately pressures him into lying about his affair with Abigail in order to maintain a good reputation. This view changes in the courtroom, when Proctor becomes extremely frustrated with the lies and deceit that Abigail is telling the judges, Proctor screams in anger, “I beg you sir, I beg you - see her what she is… She thinks to dance with me on my wife’s grave! And well she might, for I thought of her softly. God help me; I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a

With the exception of a few secrets he kept, he remained a man of relative virtue. Arthur Miller writes in Act One that "Proctor, respected and even feared in Salem, had come to regard himself as a kind of fraud." Near the end of the play, we see Proctor come to terms with his shortcomings, to the point of admitting his lechery. Motivated by his strong convictions to honesty and improvement, this shows the fusion of his private self and his public self through exposure of his private flaws that he likely wished to remain private. That said, his private self triumphs through the sacrifice of his public self, and in doing so, Proctor further gained the respect of the

The Crucible was based in 1692 in and around the town of Salem, Massachusetts, USA. The Salem witch-hunt was view as one of the strangest and most horrendous chapters in the human history. People that were prosecuted were all innocent and their deaths were all due to false accusation of people’s ridiculous belief in superstition and their paranoia. The Puritans in those times were very strict in personal habits and morality; swearing, drunkenness and gambling would be punished. The people of Salem believed in the devil and thought that witchcraft should be hunted out.

The play The Crucible, was written by Arthur Miller in 1953. It is a story he wrote after his own experience being accused of communism. This affected a lot of well-known people in the United States during this time, and was considered a witch hunt similar to the Salem witch hunts. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible about a man, John Proctor, who has an affair with Abigail Williams. She catches feelings for him and tries to cast a spell on John Proctor’s wife to kill her; this gets out of hand when Abigail’s uncle catches her and some other girls dancing during the spell in the woods. Suddenly, the whole town is living in fear of who is practicing witchcraft, who could be a witch, and innocent people are killed if they don’t confess to being witches. Overall, mass fear and panic, and false accusations are seen over and over throughout the play.

The Crucible is a play by Arthur Miller written in the 1950’s. It was set in the 1690’s in Massachusetts. The play is about the witch trials and how something like a group of girls in the woods could lead to about 200 people being hanged and accused of witchcraft. The people of Salem were new to Massachusetts as they were puritans who went off to America to set up a new religious colony . The people were new to their surroundings had the Native Americans as enemies because they took their land. Although the Crucible is about the witch trials, it is thought to be a metaphor for the McCarthy Communist trials

When Mary Warren reveals that she knows about Proctors and Abigail’s affair, before Elizabeth is taken away, Proctor is aggressive and prepared to use violence towards Mary in order to stop her from going to the court, Mary says she has to go o the court, this makes Proctor angry so he replies “ I’ll official you! “ Proctor thinks that Mary should be subservient as she’s just a common servant but as Mary knows his secret his attitude changes towards her. At this point in the play Proctor acknowledges that all might have to come public. This is a significant moment as he’s willing to blacken his good name in order to save his wife. Proctor comes to term that Mary may be the answer to their problem.

Arthur Miller is considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. He has written many acclaimed plays, including The Crucible. Written in 1953, The Crucible uses the historical perspective of the Salem Witch Trials which took place between 1962 and 1963. A lot of the inspiration for the events that take place in the play were from the McCarthyism era that was taking place at the time. It is evident that The Crucible is a critical look at the way the Communist hunt was handled, and used the hysteria and madness of the witch trials to show how history repeats itself. The relationship between men and women and the way the woman in the society is treated is also a prominent theme throughout the play.

The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a famous play which was written in the early 1950’s. The Crucible is a play based upon the events in 1692, which led to the ‘Salem Witch Trials’, a series of hearings before local magistrates to prosecute over 150 people accused of witchcraft. This was due to the hysteria caused by a group of girls accusing innocent people of witch craft. The play was set in Salem, Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. Salem was a very isolated and puritanical community, so their biggest fear was the devil and witchcraft. A person being accused of witchcraft was the worst thing possible in this society.