‘I never sold myself! I’m a good girl! I’m a proper girl!’; said Abigail Williams in The Crucible (p.
40) That and, ‘They must not blackening my name’; more than anything are what we hear the most when it comes the time to save your name. People with excessive pride would risk to lose everything to make sure nobody would spoil their name. They would even accused their neighbours of the worse crime so they would still be part of the good side of the society. In the drama play The Crucible, this is basically what happen to the main characters.
Every single move they do, every single word they say and every single thought they have is made in function of what people would think. Accused from witchcraft, the main character, John Proctor, lose all he has because of his pride. The destiny have not be so good either for Giles Corey . His pride for is family may have stood in front of the law and the authorities, and even if he saved everything for his sons, his pride drove him to death. Then you have Parris, who for his good name, tries to hide the truth from the community.
The only thing he gains from this is weight on his mind and a white name. As you may have notice, pride is one of the most important theme in The Crucible. The main character of the play is John Proctor. Back in time, he had an affair with Abigail Williams and what seemed to be some kind of little detail ends up being the main cause of the accusation charged against his wife, Elizabeth Proctor.
The way he always had to watch every single thing he does has driven him to the point that other people are part of his hidden garden and they try to keep his darkest secret away from the rest of the community because they could have reject him. The girl he had sleep with really desires him and after she got involved in a witchcraft trial, she tells the court that Elizabeth Proctor tried her power on her. She thought that his wife would be hang, so John would come back in her arms. The pride of John Proctor is shown in the novel by the way he tries not to tell what happened between Abigail and he.
He keeps it for himself as long as he can and when he finally admit it, so it would prove the intentions of Abigail, Elizabeth denies it because she thinks it was a trop against her husband. But in the society he was living, his pride was justified. He would not have been accepted by his community if they would have known his affair with another woman, and the life of the woman he cherishes the most would have been miserable. He had to keep it for him, so life would continue to be as easy as it was.
But his destiny did not want it to occurs that way. Then you have Giles Corey. His pride surely stayed stand because of his family. He wants them to be in the good part of the society where they live and not to be reject by the other citizens.
Because he was accused of witchcraft, his family could have lose everything but he did not want it to happen to the people he cared the most about, so when the authorities came to him and accused him of witchcraft, he has not deny to be a witch because he knew that it would be useless. He also did not confirm it because he wanted the best for the people he shared his life with and if he had told he was doing witchcraft they would have been putted apart from the society and it was the last thing he wanted. So he died. The authorities just keep on putting rocks on him to make him talk, but he died. He is a victim of his pride and maybe it was not for the best. He may have saved his house and his personal possessions and his family may have continued to live proudly but they have lost the one person that were getting them stuff to eat and a roof to sleep.
They have lost the man of the house, either it was a father or a husband, the one that everybody loved in first place for what he gives them. His pride is, in some kind of way, justified, because he did what he thought was the best, and as for John Proctor, the lives of the ones he loved the most would have atrocious if he had not have the pride that was burning in him. But there is someone, for who the fact that he was proud and did not want anyone to blackening his name, have been positive; Reverend Parris. Because he was an important person in the community, he felt like he had not to let the truth goes out. He felt that nobody should know that Abigail and her friends were only sporting in the wood and not conjuring spirits.
And that, even if it means that few people are going to be accused of witchcraft and be hang. The Devil cannot lives under the roof of a ministry and he is willing to do anything to prove it because he does not want to have anything to blush about his good name. ‘I cannot blink what I saw, Abigail, for my enemies will not blink it’;(p. 10). That quote from Reverend Parris shown in a really good way how much he cared about what other people were going to say about him and how much he cared about being respectable.
His pride was not justified. He jeopardise life of other people, play with the authority he had on the rest of the community and he got what he wanted. It was selfish and lame. All these characters had their reason of standing for their pride. Either it was selfish or a act of generosity for his family, they ruined their life and died with the truth in their mind and no one really knows what it is.
The title of that play, The Crucible, may be interprets easily by the fact that their pride went through a severe test to know if they would really stand for what they were and not let people think what they were not, especially if it was not good. It is clearly shows that some people must stay stand for their pride, for themselves because they would feel betray by the only person that should not have let them down; themselves.
