His character is strong willed but shows a range of emotions as his character progresses throughout the play. During Act 2 the audience sees the coolness and the tension between John Proctor and Elizabeth. They can sense that what is being thought is not what is being said. Proctor and Elizabeth fear each other and this illustrates one of the features of the play-fear. Their short sentences and being silent suggests this. It also brings tension upon their marriage, and the audience. John’s relationship with Abigail obviously still comes between him and Elizabeth, with an undercurrent of resentment on John’s part and hurt on Elizabeth’s, which divides them. However, in Act 4 he shows his true emotions, he finally is relieved of the pressure of what he has wanted to say for such a long time. There are emotionally charged scenes from Proctor in every act, the shaking of Abigail in Act 1, the tension with Elizabeth and the almost strangling of Mary Warren in Act 2. There is also a lot of temper shown by John in the Act 3 court scene and the sorrow in Act 4 before he goes to his death is very moving.
There are certain points in the play where John Proctor gives in to his emotion. He lets himself be overcome by anger and rips up, first the warrant for his wife Elizabeth and second, his confession. This also shows his disrespect for the court house and his discontent with its actions. At these points in particular he has given vent to his emotions and this is later held against him when he confronts Danforth. Proctor’s leadership skills are not the only thing tested when building up opposition to the court. When he first enters the court room Hale is clearly disturbed at how calm and dignified Proctor is, what a sober argument is put forth; however this changes when Abigail enters the room and he leaps on her and curses her “a whore” in fury.
This range of emotion makes John Proctor an extremely genuine, true to life character.
John Proctor is independent-minded, a Christian who allows his church-going to be affected by his distaste for the greed and selfishness of Parris. He did not go to church on Sundays and this was unheard of in the traditional town of Salem. He is loyal and stood up for his friends, a natural born leader who has the ability to organize opposition to the court, as the people of Andover did. He risked his good name to try and help Giles Corey and risked being turned upon by the girls by getting Mary Warren to admit she was lying. He is told when facing the court that his wife will be saved from being hanged as she is pregnant, if he drops his charges against the girls. He realizes that this will destroy the cases of Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse, that they would be abandoned to their fate. This is his first test of his personal integrity and he passes by not striking the bargain. He also does not sign his escape route confession at the end of the play, because he knows that it will also black list his friends’ names and would make their hangings pointless. This shows that he was loyal to friends. This makes the audience admire his character and personality; the audience would look up to a character like John Proctor.
John Proctor is a character with much respect in Salem. Arthur Miller says at the beginning of the play that 'in the presence of Proctor a fool felt his foolishness instantly'. The fact that John Proctor’s name means so much to him shows the audience that it is worth a lot, therefore well respected. His name is described as “weighty” by Parris and the court go out of their way in Act 4 to try and persuade John Proctor to change his mind and confess. This is a big difference from in Act 2, where Cheever and Hale choose to ignore Mary Warren’s confession to owning the doll, which should have let Elizabeth Proctor off her charge. This shows the strength of their fanaticism about hunting down and persecuting witches; this later backfires on them. This is one of the reasons why they strive for John Proctor to give his name up, they fear the discontent which will come from Proctor be hanged. Parris’ fears of being thrown from his pulpit are escalated to drive him to act against his character. This shows what an effective name John Proctor is to the society and perhaps explains why he values it so much himself.
Proctor seems to identify the weaknesses of the court; he himself is not affected by the hysteria of the witches. He comments at the beginning of the play in Act 1, in the presence of Reverend Hale, Parris and Giles Corey, in a way that shows the audience and other characters that he does not believe in witches and this causes great discontent with the fundamental Christians of Salem, which interpret everything in the Bible literally. He then goes on to point out that the signing of a confession was just an “escape route” that those confessing are just confessing to save their lives. The court cannot argue against this, as they cannot tell either way. He states “there are them that will swear to anything…” this is the crucial weakness of the judicial system which exploits the fear of the accused, whereby a confession enables the accused to escape hanging. A lie, rather than the truth, may guarantee safety. He also realizes that it is hysteria and vengeance driving the court “common vengeance writes the law” and names Hale “Pontius Pilate” a biblical reference, meaning that Hale knew Elizabeth was not guilty and was still allowed her to be persecuted by the hysteria induced crowd. Proctor also is the only main character in the play to recognize Parris’ greed and selfishness. He said “there is no light of God” in him, a serious accusation against a minister that the people of Salem would not openly make. He dismisses the seriousness of Betty’s illness; he does not believe it is to do with witchcraft and simply leaves the room, if he had not, perhaps the whole play would have turned out differently. John Proctor also points out the fundamental weakness in the courts procedure- complete faith in the accuser’s innocence. He states “…the crazy little children are jangling the keys of the kingdom…” by this comment, Proctor shows the audience that he realizes that what his wife said was true, that Abigail does want to take her place and what he says is referring to Abigail.
Fear also plays a big part in John Proctor’s character. The first sign of his fear is shown by the anger he expresses towards Abigail, manifested by his physical shaking of her. This shaking seems to be the only way to stop himself and underlines the physical nature of their former relationship. In Act 2 the fear of speaking aloud to Elizabeth about his sins is clearly shown by the tension in the scene, how they warily walk around each other and are unable to speak aloud about how they really feel. He also incurs a lot of indecision brought about by fear. The fear for his good name, of telling the town about his sins stops him from making the right decision until it is too late. Proctor puts off telling the court about Abigail telling him that there was no truth in the witchcraft and does not decide to show the court that Abigail is not to be trusted- that she is a “whore” -until he realizes that there is no other way to discredit her and get his wife out of trouble. He tries other forms of opposing the court, like using Mary Warren, before putting himself into the limelight. He only makes the final decision when his guilt is out in the open and his wife is under great threat from the witch hunt. He is then brought to the terrible decision of sacrificing his good name or loosing his wife. If he had made the right decision, when Elizabeth first told him to tell the court of his affair, then he would have brought down the reputation of Abigail straight away. If he had show signs that he was going to do this, Elizabeth would not have lied in court and she would then be freed. He was not willing to face up to the reality of his actions or accept the consequences of them until the final moment and this proved too late. By the end of Act 2 it seems as though he has lost all pretensions and is “but naked now”. No longer will he have to lie to Elizabeth or be tormented by his past, he has finally been forced into admitting his sins, his guilt. However, he recognizes that what he is coming to will not be easy and this is perhaps why he stalls the moment of truth for a while after. He also fears the consequence of the confession that would save his life and this is partially why he is hanged. He realizes that by signing the confession that he will be saving his life but after talking with his wife his conscience tells him that he will be blackening not only his name, but the names of those that have also stood strong. He would be disrespecting the name of Rebecca Nurse that he views as “such a good soul”. He states after signing the confession “how may I live with out my name?” He realizes that his name is also his identity and if he continued to live after signing the confession that he would no longer be recognizable to himself as ‘John Proctor’.
As John Proctor has almost signed his confession, the audience sees what a hard decision leaving his wife has been for him, but as he rips up the confession he shows the audience that he is strong in the face of adversity by finally doing what he has resisted for so long, following his conscience. This gains admiration from the audience, as he has proved how strong, and loyal he is to his friends and principles.
All these traits make John Proctor an admirable, realistic character, the type of character that audiences can understand and ultimately try to follow his example of following in his footsteps.
Author miller uses the title ‘The Crucible’ as a metaphor for John Proctor’s character in the Salem witch trials of 1962. His character is put under tremendous heat and comes out pure. Miller uses this realistic character to show how ridiculous but powerful hysteria can be. He portrays his own feeling about the McCarthy witch trials in America during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s through John Proctor’s character. He shows through his play his feelings about how disloyal people were, but he could not do this without using the historical parallel, as he knew himself what height the communist hysteria had reached. Like the witch hysteria in Salem, he knew that he would be persecuted for writing about fear and conscience if he were to set the play in contemporary America. Miller uses John Proctor to almost play himself and to show what he would do if put in the position of being on trial. He later proved his point by not accusing any other people of being in communist parties when he really was put on trial, to get himself off the hook, like so many other people did. John Proctor plays the crucial role in ‘The Crucible’ of being the man that is on the brink of giving in but stands strong, even though he knew that one individual would not bring down the hysteria.