How do you respond to Millers presentation of Hale in The Crucible?

Authors Avatar by kayapara (student)

Anitha Sivakumaran

How do you respond to Miller’s presentation of Hale in The Crucible?

Miller presents Hale to be an expert on witchcraft “especially since he had himself encountered a witch in his parish not long before”. Toward the beginning of the play he is seen as a young man who is keen to display and exercise his expert skills. He is enthusiastic to seek out witches and he appears to be a rather threatening authority figure who seeks to punish. The author outlines hale to have an egoistic and autocratic leadership as he “conceives of himself much as a young doctor on his first call”. Hale goes through a major personal journey over the course of the play. In Act One, Miller writes of Hale; "His goal is light, goodness, and its preservation" which undoubtedly emphasizes his good intentions and he's psyched to attain a chance to reinforce his talent, but ultimately his goal is to fearlessly fight the Devil.

Join now!

Hale is clearly a man who wants to do the morally correct thing. He believes in the justice system at work in Salem and he, initially, believes in the system of confession and punishment. On hearing Proctor’s protestations about the arrest of Rebecca Nurse, Hale has complete faith in the moral fairness of the justice system in Salem so much so that he does believe that Rebecca has been ‘far from accused’. Later, Hale’s moral beliefs are challenged when Rebecca Nurse is arrested and is accused of witchcraft. Hale’s beliefs are naive and this naivety enables Miller to show how ...

This is a preview of the whole essay