John Proctor Case

Although John Proctor has some good traits in him, overall he is not a good person. He may have done some good things throughout this time period for others, but the bad things he did were a lot worse. This is shown in the story "The Crucible" in several different ways.

For starters, he is a married man and he has an affair with a young seventeen year old girl.This is wrong for many reasons, especially the fact that she was seventeen years old! Even after the affair, John still ended up being alone and talking to Abigail Williams. Yeah he said her "We never touched, Abby"(1.1225), but he still was alone with her with her. When things really started to heat up in the court, Abigail told Danforth untrue things about Elizabeth so she would be sent to prison, or even hanged. Elizabeth begged John to go to Salem to get her to stop, but he was making every excuse just so he didn't have to. Another way you can tell that John still has feelings for Abigail is that when he sees her out in public, even when he is with Elizabeth, he blushes. John tries to say that he only does it because he is embarrassed of Abby, but Elizabeth knows he still has feelings for her.

Not only has John had an affair, but he also does things differently than everyone else does, and sometimes he doesn't even do things at all. This makes him seem as if he is trying to hide something such as being a witch, or even worshiping the devil. All the people are supposed to attend church and all of the worships every time they are going on, but John doesn't. He has only gone to a couple of worships, and hasn't gone for a couple of months. Not going to church in this time period was a sign of worshiping the devil or of doing witchcraft. John Proctor has three children, and all of them are expected to be baptised. But only two of them were actually baptised at birth, and the third one wasn't baptised at all. These things also made him look like he was practicing witchcraft. But unlike mostly everyone else, John doesn't believe in witches.

A third reason as to why John Proctor was not a good person is that he didn't know all of his "commandments". This is very ironic for three very big reasons. The first reason is that these commandments were taught at church. John Proctor said that he didn't think attending all of the worships was a big deal, but if he would've went to them, he would know them. The second reason this is very ironic is because Elizabeth knew all of them, but he didn't. John Proctor said that his house is very big on the religion, and that he knew them. But when he was asked to recite all of them, he struggled saying them and even forgot one of them. The one he forgot is that "one shall not perform adultery". The thing about this is that John had already done that, and it is very ironic that he happened to forget that one.

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