Presentation 4.1

The ending of The Crucible

Why do the court want Proctor to confess?

‘It is a weighty name; it will strike the village that Proctor confess.

• Centrality of names and reputations in Salem village.

• How do the audience feel about the court bringing the visibly pregnant Elizabeth to persuade John to confess?

Proctor’s dialogue with Elizabeth

• Contrast to the stunted formality and awkwardness of the beginning ofAct II :How and why has their relationship evolved?

• Importance of stage directions to emphasise emotions / intuitive understanding of one another:What kind of atmosphere is Miller generating? Audience response?

• Elizabeth taking some of the blame for Proctor’s adultery: ‘I have sins of my own to count. It needs a cold wife to prompt lechery’; ‘You take my sins upon you’;‘Suspicion kissed you when I did’;‘It were a cold house I kept!’Breaking down of barriers, mutual forgiveness and understanding.

• Recognition of Proctor as a ‘good man’: ‘I never knew such goodness in the world!’

Proctor’s dilemma: to confess or not to confess?

• Elizabeth’s refusal to judge him: ‘I cannot judge you, John … As you will, I would have it’:Audience response?

• Proctor’s feelings of hypocrisy:‘It is a pretence’;‘My honesty is broke … Nothing’s spoiled by giving them this lie that were not rotten long before’;‘Let them that never lied die now to keep their souls’.

• Example of friends: although ‘There be many confessed’, Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse refuse:How does Proctor feel about the fact his friends refuse to confess?

Affirmation of Life

‘I want my life … I will have my life’

How does the audience feel about Proctor’s initial decision to confess to save his life?

Why does Proctor go back on

his decision?• ‘It is evil’• Identity: ‘What is John Proctor?’• Need for confession to be written and posted on the church

door ‘for the good instruction of the village’.• Example of Rebecca Nurse: ‘Oh John – God send his mercy

on you!’• Distaste at pressure to incriminate others: ‘I speak my own

sins; I cannot judge another… I have no tongue for it.’

The sanctity of Proctor’s name

• Refusal to sign name to confession to show publicly: ‘Is there no good penitence but it be public?’

• Self assertion: pride in name – ‘I am John Proctor!”• Shame: ‘I have three children – how may I teach them to

walk like men in the world, and I sold my friends?’• Stage directions suggest Proctor’s wild, emotional state.• Impassioned dialogue: ‘Because it is my name!’:

What does Miller suggest about the importance of Proctor’s name to him? Is this superficial pride or does the significance of his name run deeper?

Tearing of the confession

• Audience response?

• Has Proctor achieved a kind of moral victory over the court / society or is this sacrifice fruitless?

• ‘He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him.’