Pride Relations In Arthur Miller's The Crucible

Pride carries a broad variety of connotation among differing people. Pride can represent someone’s whole self worth or simply be another set of syllables in the English language. Pride may be someone’s support to get up every morning, and it is the backbone to their entire personality(Compound). Pride can represent whatever you need it depict, but everyone’s perspective is up for interpretation. Pride is capable of being an individual’s segway to propel a long lived goal or be the reason they take a few steps back due to an immoral decision. The Crucible, effectively demonstrates the consequences and backfires that pride can have on a community. Not only can an individual’s pride result in disputes in their lives, but it has the ability to disturb the lives of others. Arthur Miller, in The Crucible, presents various characters like Abigail, Danforth, and Proctor, that cause detrimental and toxic issues in Salem all over the risk of having pride in their clean reputations. With Abigail’s pretentious nature, she arrogantly ranks her name at a high and innocent status in the Salem community. The insidious (vocab) girl puts on prodigious (vocab) acts, as able to be observed during multiple instances during the play, and it snowballs into her having absolute control of power and much harm in the town. The power that Abigail gained in return for her snobby and narcissistic ego only fueled her confidence and negatively affected the town completely. Parris is accusing her and Betty for pursuing witchcraft in the woods, and Abigail arrogantly remarks,”There be no blush about my name”(Miller 12). Though she has already committed immense crimes, such as false accusations of Tituba and a secretive affair with John Proctor, she is still boasting her name as clean within the society (Complex). Her embodiment of innocence, I believe, is all a deceiving mask for the public. Her inner plentiful confidence subsequently leads to her wrong- doings,

Pride carries a broad variety of connotation among differing people. Pride can represent someone’s whole self worth or simply be another set of syllables in the English language. Pride may be someone’s support to get up every morning, and it is the backbone to their entire personality(Compound). Pride can represent whatever you need it depict, but everyone’s perspective is up for interpretation. Pride is capable of being an individual’s segway to propel a long lived goal or be the reason they take a few steps back due to an immoral decision. The Crucible, effectively demonstrates the consequences and backfires that pride can have on a community. Not only can an individual’s pride result in disputes in their lives, but it has the ability to disturb the lives of others. Arthur Miller, in The Crucible, presents various characters like Abigail, Danforth, and Proctor, that cause detrimental and toxic issues in Salem all over the risk of having pride in their clean reputations.

With Abigail’s pretentious nature, she arrogantly ranks her name at a high and innocent status in the Salem community. The insidious (vocab) girl puts on prodigious (vocab) acts, as able to be observed during multiple instances during the play, and it snowballs into her having absolute control of power and much harm in the town. The power that Abigail gained in return for her snobby and narcissistic ego only fueled her confidence and negatively affected the town completely. Parris is accusing her and Betty for pursuing witchcraft in the woods, and Abigail arrogantly remarks,”There be no blush about my name”(Miller 12). Though she has already committed immense crimes, such as false accusations of Tituba and a secretive affair with John Proctor, she is still boasting her name as clean within the society (Complex). Her embodiment of innocence, I believe, is all a deceiving mask for the public. Her inner plentiful confidence subsequently leads to her wrong- doings, most of them being fatal towards other people, and she is well aware of the damage she is committing. Her psyche ultimately wrecked the town of Salem all due to the misconduct of her vanity. Similarly, Judge Danforth shares many of these cocky flaws in his personality as well.

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Judge Danforth, a very experienced and respected judge, is a newcomer to Salem, but he is not timid to prominently boasting his high status and reputations to the entire community. Danforth is very quick to side with the girls and continually sticks up for them because I believe he does not want to backtrack and face the damage he has already dealt with during this case. At all costs, he is trying to sway away from the idea that he might have been wrong in his first assumptions, so he wants to show how serious he is about his accomplishments before. When Francis Nurse is remonstrating (vocab) against the judge, Danforth seems to brag about his prior triumphs as a high court judge:”And seventy-two condemned to hang by that signature”(Miller 87). Though Danforth might have been sufficient enough in other trials to gain the high court that he has, he is doing absurdly the opposite in Salem, and he seems satisfied to say that he believes the children(Compound- Complex). By stating such a bold statement, he is essentially announcing that he proudly has hung many before, and definitely will not shy away from it here, despite the evidence that anyone besides the children may supply. His arrogance is causing the community to crumble beneath it due to multitudes of eminent members of society being put to death. The pride Danforth bears consistently causes an abundance of evils, mainly affecting the town. As of result of one of Danforth’s mistakes, Proctor follows, but his mistake surely is not as evil to the town Salem itself.

Though he may be a wary subject to most of the town, Proctor stands firmly behind the reputation and meaning of which his name represents. Unlike, the other two, John Proctor is not cocky towards his name, but rather shows self-confidence. He depicts that he would rather die for the cause of his name being respected and pure than to have it be trampled on for being a lying phony. The modest pride he carries still negatively affects the town, causing the citizens to be very distraught and saddened. Following his short-lived confession to avoid hanging, Proctor revokes his confession while wailing,”Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang!”(Miller 143). I believe the whole reason in which why John Proctor took the hanging is because her sees that the innocent people being hanged are very valuable in this community, yet they maintain their morality and are taking the death penalty. Proctor gains that same moral sense, and sticks with his gut to be an honest man. Once Proctor withdraws his confession and gathers that there is meaning and ownership to his name, he endures the death sentence. I believe, the Salem community is negatively affected during this, and realizes that this whole shenanigan must be a charade if these well-respected individuals are willing to go as far a death to prove their holiness. Though it is up for debate whether Proctor made the correct decision or not, his pride and integrity ultimately troubled the town, in a different manner than the previous characters.

In Miller’s, The Crucible, he describes many characters, such as Abigail, Danforth, and John Proctor, as manifesting community-wide dilemmas which arose from pride relations. Abigail, Danforth, and Proctor’s actions all took a toll on the town of Salem, and snowballed into more issues commencing all at the fault of their reputations and dignity. Though pride in yourself is crucial to self- esteem and living a joyful life, grim outcomes can come from too much of it or absence of it. Everything, including pride is good in moderation, and harmful in excess, one just must be cautious to what that word means to them. Pride is a mysterious word, the value of it all comes from the beholder themselves.