The Crucible - Characters

Reverend Samuel Parris


Parris’s guiding principle is self-interest, but he is too ineffective to achieve his purpose.
His vanity, resentment, and constant complaints against his parishioners betray a weak character.
He is servile towards social superiors (e.g. Danforth) but brutal to anyone unable to retaliate, such as Tituba.
In the opening scene we are shocked by his lack of fatherly feeling. He is far more concerns about the effects of Betty’s illness on herself.

His inability to take firm decisions has led him to summon a witch-hunter, while trying to damp down rumours of witchcraft that would damage his own reputation. When the blame is safely diverted to Tituba, Mr. Parris becomes an enthusiastic witch-hunter.
His behaviour during the trial scenes is as self-centred as we would expect. Parris fears the victims will turn against him if they are set free, and sweats with anxiety whenever the judge seems impressed by their defence. His anxious interruptions provoke a crushing rebuke from Danforth.
Parris gets his comeuppance when his niece realises that the tide of public opinion has turned against the witch hunt, and makes a run for it with the contents of his strongbox. When his enemies are condemned to die, he pleads for a postponement – because he fears he may be assassinated, not because of concern for his victims.



John Proctor


John Proctor is the central character of the play, the protagonist.
He appears as one of the villagers drawn to Parris’s house by the rumours of Betty’s strange illness. His entry comes directly after Betty’s cry to Abigail: “you drank a charm to kill John Proctor’s wife!”
Almost until the end of the play a sense of guilt and shame holds John back from taking positive action at the right moment.

In his scene with Abigail, we learn the reasons for his guilt, and why he lies to himself as well as to abigail and his wife. “I have hardly stepped off this farm this seven-month”.
In the scene around Betty’s bed, John emerges as a down-to-earth man who speaks his mind and is not afraid to confront those in authority, especially when they abuse their position.
We may disapprove of his threatening of Mary and Abigail with the whip, but this must be seen in the context of his time.
His seated replies to Parris are not always to be taken at face value (“why, then I must find it and join it”). They show an honest disgust at Parris’s materialistic outlook and betrayal of his calling.


John is a practical farmer, struggling to win a living for his family, but still finds time to take a sensuous delight in his surroundings: “I never see such a load of flowers on the earth”.
The difficulties with his marriage might appear insuperable; but finally they appear as surface damage to what has been a deep and lasting union.
John’s anguished reaction to his wife’s arrest is the first move towards breaking through the restraints imposed by guilt. In the escalating horror of the witch-hunt, he becomes a reluctant hero. In striving to expose its fraud, he comes to acknowledge his responsibility to society and thereafter finds his true self.
Miller has sometimes been criticised for giving his hero a modern mind. This is surely a misreading of history. By 1692, there was dissent at all levels of colonial society. The number of recorded whippings, reprimands and public humiliations prove that many people did not accept the Puritan ethic. John Proctor in Miller’s play is a link between our own times and the values of seventeenth-century.


Abigail Williams


Miller gives us two facts about Abigail: she is “Strikingly beautiful” and has an “endless capacity for dissembling”.
Abigail is one of a band of Salem girls, most of whom are orphans. Their childhood has been joyless, subject to strict Puritan discipline.
Although adolescent, these girls are addressed as “child”, a wilful suppression of their developing sexuality. They suffer the drudgery of adult labour without adult freedom. They cannot work off their energies in the outdoor pursuits of their brothers, not express their frustrations. Their rebellion takes the form of expeditions into the danger zone of the forest. The thrill of arousing adult anxiety if they are found out is probably part of the excitement.

Before The Crucible begins, John Proctor has drawn Abigail into the adult world by seducing her. “I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart!” she cries, when John rejects her. His repentance is sincere enough, even if it does not stretch to what he has done to his 17 year old servant.
Elizabeth sees her adulterous husband as a “good man…only somewhat bewildered” while Abigail is a “whore”.

As well as being the driving force of the play, Abigail’s desire for John is a symbol for the anarchic, irrational side of life that the Puritans tried so hard to repress. Thwarted love makes her ruthless. She has already “drunk a charm to kill John Proctor’s wife”.
By blaming Tituba for the adventure in the forest Abigail discovers a more dangerous aspect to the ascendancy she holds over her friends.
When she begins to name the witches, Betty picks up her lead without instruction. Backed up by her hysterical followers, Abigail controls the adults who have previously controlled her. Her ability to turn events to her own advantage increases with practice.

Her refusal to accept John’s rejection combines fatally with the rising social panic. The accusations eventually bring down her real target, Elizabeth Proctor. Once embarked on this course, Abigail cannot draw back, even when the man she wants is condemned to die.
In the end all she can do is to leave town in a hurry. With a last bold gesture she ensures a comfortable future by emptying her uncle’s strong box.

Abigail has courage, intelligence and a magnetic personality, but employs these gifts only in destructive ways. She exerts a totally malign influence on the terrified villagers. Most of them do not realise that the only witch in their midst is Abigail Williams.

Mary Warren


The same age as Abigail (17), Mary is the most fully developed character among the band of girls. She is “subservient, naïve, lonely”, and when we first meet her she is in a panic about their escapade in the forest.
She is a target for bullying, yet for such a timid person, she is surprisingly pert to her master, perhaps because she knows his secret.

Mary’s behaviour varies greatly during the play. At the beginning of Act 2, Elizabeth tells John that she has been unable to stop Mary leaving the house: “She raises up her chin like the daughter of a prince and says to me, ‘I must go to Salem…I am an official of the court!’”. The attention of Judge Danforth and other officials has inflated Mary’s ego, but her sense of self-importance is fragile.

When she enters she is depressed and exhausted. She weeps for the sentence passed on Goody Osburn. Her conscience protests, but she is too overawed to question the judges’ version of events. This inner conflict makes her seek comfort in a childish pursuit – doll-making. The “poppet” she sews in court has fatal consequences for the Proctors.
When her master orders her to bed, Mary becomes petulant and tries to assert her rights; but by the end of the act she is sobbing in terror at the thought of standing up to Abigail: “I cannot, I cannot”. Despite her best efforts, this is exactly what happens in Act 3.

Mary stands for all those people who recognise injustice but are too weak to resist it. Through her, Miller also shows how and why the girls managed to believe in the victims’ guilt.

Elizabeth Proctor


Early in the play Abigail describes Elizabeth as “a bitter woman, a lying, cold, snivelling woman…a gossiping liar”. We soon learn the true reasons for her opinion, and when Elizabeth appears in Act 2, it becomes obvious that Abigail has grossly distorted the truth.
Elizabeth has a more complex personality than her quiet, somewhat repressed manner suggests. John’s infidelity has hurt both her pride and her religious convictions. She cannot bring herself to give her husband the warmth he craves, and she suspects, quite rightly, that he still finds Abigail attractive. She undervalues John’s efforts to make amends.

Elizabeth is both gentle and practical. Despite her pity for the “poor rabbit”, she kills and cooks it for John’s super. She tries to save Mary a whipping; after her arrest, she fives orders for the household and tries to conceal her fear, concerned more for the children than herself. She is the first to understand Abigail’s intentions, and braves her husband’s anger to urge him into action. Unfortunately, it is already too late.
During her three months in prison, Elizabeth looks into her heart and realises that her own coldness has provoked John’s adultery: “I never knew how I should say my love. I kept a cold house!”. Going against all her beliefs she lies to save her husband’s reputation, unaware that he has already made his adultery public.

Elizabeth’s real strength shines through in the last Act. She resists all pressure from John himself, from court officials, and her own longing to save him from the gallows. She insists that her husband must decide for himself: and makes no comment on his first false choice. She gives way to grief only when he has torn up his confession.


Danforth


Danforth, the senior judge, is “a grave man in his sixties, of some humour and sophistication”. His reasonable manner only reinforces the horror of his actions in Salem. Only once does he lose control of himself, when at the end of the trial scene he becomes caught up in the hysteria created by Abigail.
At the beginning of Act 4, Danforth hears from a distraught Mr. Parris that Abigail has fled from Salem with the contents of his strngbox. “He walks in thought, deeply worried”. Is Danforth worried that Abigail is a fraud, and the whole series of trials has been based on a false assumption? No, he is anxious that the news may get around and persuade others to think so.

To the very end of the play, Danforth remains convinced that he is in the right. “While I speak God’s law, I will not crack its voice with whimpering”. Like Mr. Hale before his change of heart, he seems to believe that the witchcraft hysteria and its results are in themselves a sign that the Devil is at work in Salem.
Through Danforth, Miller demonstrates what happens when the state assumes absolute moral authority to direct the lives and beliefs of its citizens. The results are terrifying. Danforth “knows” that his mission is to purge the village. This overrides legal quibbles about evidence or court proceedings. He is unable to understand that even if God’s law in infallible, its interpreters are not.

This throw light on his behaviour in Act 3, where he displays both ruthlessness and courtesy. Judge Danforth and the defendants are following different agendas. John and Giles suppose their fate depends on presenting credible evidence. Danforth has a higher good in mind. He must carry out God’s will in Salem. To this end he manipulates court procedure and openly exploits the weaknesses of those on trial. He uses Elizabeth’s pregnancy in his efforts to dissuade John from charging the girls with fraud, and he remains silent while Hathorne bullies Mary Warren. For the same reason, he will not postpone the hangings. Danforth will not permit any crack in God’s fortress.
The overall result is that lies are taken as truth, and common sense ignored, for example, his wilful blindness to the widespread fear his court has aroused in the village, and his refusal to believe that Elizabeth has lied to spare her husband’s reputation. In these incidents Miller drives home the danger of allowing the state to take over the functions of private conscience.


Reverand Hale


The minister from Beverly is perhaps the most pitiable character in the play. Although John Proctor’s road to self knowledge ends at the gallows, he dies with a renewed sense of his own worth and reconciled to his wife. In Reverend Hale’s case, self-knowledge brings a weight of guilt that must haunt him for the rest of his life.
John Hale is a sincere and kindly man. His failing is to believe without question that those who rule by the laws of God cannot make mistakes, and that all evil is external, not in people’s minds.

By the end of the play, he has realised that the powerful can be imperfect. A rather conceited intellectual, and inclined to “smile at the ignorance of the yeomanry”, he is eager to use his “painfully acquired armoury of symptoms, catchwords, and diagnostic procedures”, that without meaning to, he unleashes the Salem witch-hunt.
Hale examines Tituba with conscientious attention to detail; he even treats her kindly. It is plain that her fear prompts her to “confess” and that Parris and Putnam are taking callous advantage, but Hale is too blinded to notice. By Act 2, the witch-hunt he has authorised is out of control.

When he interviews the Proctors, he firmly suppresses his emerging doubts. He convinces himself that the arrest of Rebecca Nurse indicates “some secret blasphemy that stinks to heaven”, and not a miscarriage of justice.
Rev. Hale’s doubts grow as the trials proceed. In Act 3, he becomes increasingly alarms and tries to put a case for the defence. Danforth ignores his attempts. When Elizabeth is removed, Hale brakes into open opposition: “ I may shut my conscience to it no more – private vengeance is working through this testimony”. After John Proctor’s arrest he denounces the proceedings and walks out.

Tortured by remorse, Hale returns to Salem, and tries to persuade the condemned prisoners to avoid hanging by making a false confession. “Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood” he warns Elizabeth, begging her to make her husband confess. She rejects Hale’s plea as “the Devil’s argument”. The minister’s last desperate appeal proves that he has lost sight of everything but his own sense of guilt.