When Proctor begins to seek the truth, it acts is his first move to make up for his sins, ainds in him breaking throught the restraints of his guilt. While doing this though, he becomes a reluctant hero of the play and gains a huge responsibility in the seeing through of the trials. Proctor also has his own morals, and so searches for the truth in himself, and pushes himself to be a good man of true beliefs. He doesn’t feel himself to be adequate to act as a martyr, but in the end he appears to be the only man decent enough in the play to fill this role.
The only way that Proctor can cease the trials is to admit to his adultery, and so has to face the truth himself before he can allow justice to be done. It takes a lot for Proctor to do this as he has huge amount of pride in himself, and doesn’t not want to ruin his reputation and his good name in the village. Although he tries to avoid this originally, through Mary Warren, Proctor is eventually left with no alternative but to admit to his adultery. Proctor is desperate for Danforth and the court to accept what he is saying as the truth, and stresses just how much Abigail is trying to stir things up. “I beg you, sir, I beg you—see her what she is… She thinks to dance with me on my wife’s grave! And well she might, for I thought of her softly. God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a whore’s vengeance…” At this point Proctor prioritises the truth, and admits to his affair with Abigail. Yet instead of Abigail being exposed as a liar and a ‘whore,’ his honesty backfires and he is arrested.
When Proctor is given the chance to confess, and save his own life, he shows his true integrity. Although he does falter, and actually signs the written confession he realises that he cannot do it, and to do so would be betraying the other people who had been falsely accused as well as him. He wants to save his name and realises that he cannot lie simply to save himself from the gallows. “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! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” After having fought for the truth and justice, Proctor can’t find it in himself to lie and have his name tarnished for the rest of his life, as well as his soul.
Elizabeth Proctor fully supported her husband, and accepted that he was dying for the right cause. It would have been understandable for Elizabeth to tell Proctor to simply confess to witchcraft, to save him from the gallows, however she let him follow his beliefs and integrity. “He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!”
Although things do not turn out how Proctor would have liked in the end, he did actually achieve what he aimed to ultimately. The people of Salem did realise that the trials had been a sham, after Abigail ran off at the end of the play. This unfortunately happened after Proctor had died though, making him a martyr and the tragic hero of “The Crucible.”
Throughout the play John Proctor is the only character to actively seek the truth, and desperately wants others to follow him and justice to be done. Although things did not turn out exactly how Proctor wanted them to, it eventually became clear that he was a good, genuine man. Ironically he could be seen to be the purest member of the society, even though he did not attend church regularly and didn’t support Reverend Parris. His role of the protagonist and hero of the play was mostly down to his purity, and personal integrity and the fact that he was the single character to fight the injustice occurring to his death, becoming the martyr that he never wanted to be.
