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Throughout The Crucible many of the characters experience changes to their

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Throughout The Crucible many of the characters experience changes to their personality. The change in John Proctor is quite prominent

In Act IV Proctor says, ‘I cannot mount the gibbet like a saint. It is fraud. I am not that man.’ At the end of the play he goes to execution saying, ‘Now I do think I see some shred of goodness in John
Proctor.’ What has made this change come about?

Throughout The Crucible many of the characters experience changes to their personality. The change in John Proctor is quite prominent and extremely important in the play.

When John says, ‘I cannot mount the gibbet like a saint. It is fraud. I am not that man’ he is sure that he does not want to die.
Later on, while waiting for execution he …show more content…

Being forgiven is also part of being a Christian and he had been forgiven by Elizabeth, but if he were to lie he would loose forgiveness. It is also important that he went to heaven, instead of hell, for his eternal soul.

John sees himself as a sinner who had done bad things, but will take any opportunity to make up for them. John’s appearance in the village is respectable and his name has been washed clean, so he would not willingly blacken his name again. John’s reputation means a lot to him, and in the past that is all he has cared about.

As he sees himself as such a sinner he thinks that he is a very unlikely martyr. This though of himself as nothing but a sinner makes his conscience direct him to lie. John’s confession is a last resort as he himself says that a man would not willingly ‘cast away his good name’. The confession however, is a well thought-of act, as he sacrifices the thing that means the most to him, his reputation, for the sake of truth. We can see that John is a good man deep down, who is trying to turn away from evil.

When John is offered the opportunity to make a public confession of his guilt and live, he almost goes along with it, he even signs the written confession. It was his pride and fear of public opinion which made him hold his adultery from the court, but by the end of the play, when he is near execution, it is then that he is more concerned about his personal

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