The idea of this blog is to talk a little bit about John Proctor, the main character of Arthur Miller’s book “The Crucible” and find out whether he is a tragic hero or he isn’t. Before we even start to debate this point lets see what is a tragic hero. Is a great or virtuous character in a dramatic tragedy who is destined for downfall, suffering, or defeat with a final positive purpose. The Crucible is a book that explains the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 as a way to satirize society in the United States during The Red Scare in the 1950´s. John Proctor is one of the main characters in this play; he is a family man who is married to Elizabeth Proctor, who he has three children with. He is a hard working farmer, very dedicated on having a successful farm that he works all day long, sometimes working on Sundays instead of attending to Sabbath mas.
The majority of the play is based on him and his relationship with his wife and other characters, such as Abigail Williams. She is the main accuser and also accused of witchcraft in Salem, because she and her friends were experimenting with estrange supernatural activities and people are suspecting that from her, they bring innocent people to court and are responsible for their hangings. However, Proctor realizes that he could prevent the unfortunate events that were happening caused by Abigail but in order to do so, he would have to confess to his affair with her.
Proctor wants to save the lives of all those innocent people, especially his wife, from being hanged, He eventually publicly accepts his sin, but it is too late and the problem is too advanced now, not even the truth could change the fiasco that Abigail had produced. Finally, we can see that the mistake he made by getting involved with Abigail lead to his downfall and no matter what he did to try and make things right, all of his attempts were destined to fail.