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The Crucible John Proctor Selfish Analysis

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Caleb Owens Mrs. Page English 11P 22 September 2017 Yeah, he’s selfish too John Proctor is the main character in the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Near the end of the play he is accused of witchcraft and decides to sign a confession to escape the death penalty. He ends up ripping the paper to pieces saying “how may i live without my name? I have given you my soul, leave me my name!”. Despite being one of precious few “good” characters in the play the argument proposed is that this act was done only out of selfish motivation. The first reason... john acted selfishly is the fact that he had other options earlier on. Such as, he could have at any time loaded up a carriage and run away out of Salem even after his wife had been accused of witchcraft. Although running away would have been out of his character and would have made for a boring story line, it is no doubt a possibility that he could have done this to escape the unfair trials, loaded questions and people trying to incriminate him. The second example john acted selfishly is when he ripped up the confession he in essence said that the welfare of his wife and children was not worth lying and preserving his name. He ripped it up and publicly declared it …show more content…

Your name is not who you, are a wise man once sang “The paparazzi flashes, and that they think that it's you, But they don't know that who you are is not what you do” in this case i agree. Another stated “It's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you.”. I disagree, motive is everything. Is it wrong for a spy to lie to his authorities to save millions of lives? No. however, if he lied to save himself over the other hundreds or millions of people that is not a worthy motive. Many people lied to save the jews hiding in their basements during WWII, was it wrong for them to lie to their authorities and the military? Should they have saved themselves and allowed thousands to be

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