Characters who seem to be heroic, such as Reverend Hale in The Crucible, initially appear to be consistent and set in their beliefs become aware of their faults at a futile moment in the story. Reverend Hale comes to Salem in an attempt to purge the town of witches and demons. Inadvertently Hale causes the deaths and jailing of innocent people. At a later point in the story he returns to Salem and exclaims, “I have come to do the devil’s work. I come to counsel Christians they should belie themselves. There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head” (Miller 121). Although Hale never seemed to be a hero in the eyes of the reader he was a man of reason and knowledge who had come to Salem with good intentions. However, after …show more content…
Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald alludes to and questions many standard American beliefs. One of the most extreme cases that exemplifies his criticism is Gatsby’s fantastical description of what it would have been like to kiss Daisy when they had first known each other. “His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own,” Nick describes Gatsby’s vision, “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God” (Fitzgerald 110). Entrenched in Gatsby’s vast imagination is the idea that Daisy is flawless and the epitome of his goals. However irrational Gatsby’s mind is, he realizes that once he actually kissed her his idealistic version of her will disappear and he will realize her imperfections. This is is a perfect metaphor for Fitzgerald’s stance towards the American Dream, the unrealistic and heroic expectations of class mobility and the clean cut ideas about hard work and are, for the most part, theoretical. Fitzgerald realizes that in many cases, such as Gatsby’s, pining after an ideal yields nothing because of the impossibility of perfection. Fitzgerald ends the novel by attempting to describe the emptiness of the promise of the American Dream by writing, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”(Fitzgerald 180). The promise of success is endlessly beat down by the “current” that all people have to fight against. It is romantic and arguably foolish to attempt to break the odds and the safest and easiest route will always be to go backwards. The apparent futility of exerting effort is only counteracted by the existentiality of life, if there is no reason to try then why does life exist. Heroic ideas such as the American Dream are doomed to
Reverend Hale admits to himself that he may have started the witch trials in Salem, feeling guilty Hale strives to save anyone that he can from being hung. After some time, Reverend Hale realizes that the witch accusations are driven by ulterior motives. He feels guilty because he is the one who confirmed that the presence of the devil is in the town of Salem, causing fear to overcome many people. Hale exclaims, “There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!!”(Miller 131). He believes that because he started the unjust trials he is the one to blame for the execution of innocents. Hale is convinced that if he had never gotten involved then the witch trials may have never occurred. In an attempt to fix the problem he created,
Reverend Hale shows how he has a great heart in The Crucible. The reverend travels just to help these girls but only knows of one. That there shows how he doesn’t care of how long the travel might be, he shall be there to help. He also shows his great heart when he says, “We shall need hard study if it comes to tracking down the Old Boy” (Miller, Act 1). The reason why this quote shows how he has a good
In Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, many characters were drastically affected by the traumatic trials and executions happening in Salem. One such character was Reverend Hale. Reverend Hale began as a well-respected and confident witch hunter but ended as a disillusioned man filled with guilt over the death of innocent people.
After reading Acts 3 and 4 of the Crucible, I have concluded that the character I liked the most in the play was Reverend Hale. Introduced in Act 1, Hale went to Salem to diagnose any witchcraft and restore the town to health. His good intentions and desire to help others makes him very vulnerable and he often gets manipulated. Abigail uses this flaw of Hale to her advantage; using him to convict people of witchcraft without the evidence to prove it. It is in Acts 3 and 4 which we see Hales true character when his attempts to correct his inaccuracy mean standing up for what is right. For example Reverend Hale in the following quote realized his wrongdoings, “Excellency, I have signed seventy-two death warrants; I am a minister of the Lord,
Characters such as Macbeth or Professor Moriarty, while typically portrayed as “evil,” are morally complex characters that view themselves as protagonists, similar to Reverend Hale. In Arthur Miller’s seminal recreation of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible, a group of Puritan farmers, landowners, and priests collide in a tale of desperate fear and hysteria. Reverend Hale, a minister with what appears limitless knowledge of the supernatural, is thrust into an event that his expertise could never prepare him for. While Hale’s intentions to eliminate all Demonic presence from Salem appear noble, the outcome leads to the deaths of many innocents and the greater spread of hysteria. Hale creates chaos by placing himself into a leadership
The Salem Witch Trials were a time of destruction and tragedy; the children and the people of the court were accusing everyone in their town of witchcraft. In The Crucible, a play about the Salem With Trials; Reverend Hale is an extremely dynamic character towards his beliefs and power. Hale changes throughout the story from being determined to find witchery in Salem to realizing that all the accused were innocent. The main problem for Hale in The Crucible is power: the level of it, how he uses it, and the issues it may cause.
Throughout the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the character Reverend Hale takes the role of identifying witchcraft in Salem and getting rid of it by converting or removing the “infected,” if present. Hale is a “spiritual doctor” who only tries to do good while following his faith, he intends no harm. However, his purpose throughout the play is bigger than what is manifest, he resembles Miller’s paradox of theocracy: Salem was eventually torn apart because of the desire for a pure theocracy. Hale not only resembles the paradox, but he is also a morally ambiguous character because of his changes of view on justice and religion.
Spells, chants, potions? Dealing with the Devil? Selling one’s soul? Witchcraft is a life altering accusation that could lead to execution. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the talk of witchcraft is flowing throughout Salem, Massachusetts. Called to hunt for the Devil is Reverend John Hale, a master in witchcraft. Reverend Hale’s character changes dramatically as the sequences of events surrounding the Salem witch trials unfold.
Reverend John Hale from Beverly, Massachusetts was summoned to Salem, a town full of supposed witches, manipulative children, a corrupt government, and depraved leaders, yet he takes on an impossible task of saving the wicked from themselves. Playwright Arthur Miller's 1950’s play, The Crucible, displays static character John Hale as a determined, willing, young man who stays true to his morals and remains righteous and compassionate throughout the work. Beginning to end, John Hale exhibits consistent traits as an eager and zealous individual, although at times ingenuous; additionally, Hale displays honesty and morality through the four Acts that complete his compassionate and trusting personality.
Themes of hope, success, and wealth overpower The Great Gatsby, leaving the reader with a new way to look at the roaring twenties, showing that not everything was good in this era. F. Scott Fitzgerald creates the characters in this book to live and recreate past memories and relationships. This was evident with Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, Tom and Daisy’s struggling marriage, and Gatsby expecting so much of Daisy and wanting her to be the person she once was. The theme of this novel is to acknowledge the past, but do not recreate and live in the past because then you will not be living in the present, taking advantage of new opportunities.
Fitzgerald conveys this message through Gatsby as Gatsby pursues his dreams for the entire book. When Gatsby came close to achieving his ultimate goal of finally getting back together with Daisy he begins to feel off about it and describes it, “As I went over to say good-by I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby's face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.”
The notion of the ‘American Dream’ is one of the repeated aspects portrayed in this book, since Gatsby’s entire life is dedicated to achieving this. The ‘American Dream’ comprises of grand opulence, social equality, wealth; more specifically, a big house with a big garden, the newest model cars, the most fashionable attire, and a traditional four-peopled ‘happy’ family. To Fitzgerald, the ‘American Dream’ itself is a positive, admirable pursuit. We can see this when Fitzgerald uses personification, “flowers”, to background positive connotations behind the idea of the ‘American Dream’. In regard to Gatsby, he achieves the wealth aspect of this ‘dream’, “he had come a long way to this blue lawn”; however, he was yet to be satisfied because he did not have Daisy. Ever since the very beginning of the story, Gatsby always associated Daisy with magnificent affluence, the white house, and the grand quality of being rich. Gatsby wanted everything ever since he was first introduced to the higher status. But Gatsby felt incomplete and unfulfilled even after getting everything he dreamt of, so he sourced this emptiness as not having Daisy, where in reality, “he neither understood or desired” the motives he thought he once had.
“The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better,” stated John Dewey. Always trying to do the right thing and move on from past mistakes will allow people to see how you are trying to improve yourself; Reverend Hale is not always seen making morally correct choices, but he tries to distinguish the right path for him and the people of Salem. Reverend Hale, a morally ambiguous character, tries to prove that witchcraft is taking place in Salem and makes an effort to try and get those accused back to God; Hale tries to convince those accused to confess to witchcraft, to prevent them from being hanged.
The Great Gatsby, a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a story of misguided love between a man and a woman. Fitzgerald takes his reader through the turbulence and trials of Jay Gatsby’s life and of his pining for the girl he met five years prior. The main theme of the novel, however, is not solely about the love shared between Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby. The main purpose is to show the decline and decay of the American Dream in the 1920’s. The American Dream is the goal or idea which suggests that all people can succeed through hard work, and that all have the potential to live happy, successful lives. While on the surface, Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, portrays the life of a man who is truly focused on one dream: to reclaim the love of his life. Fitzgerald illustrates the problem of being so single-minded through Gatsby’s ultimate demise. His slow evolution and reveal of the character of Gatsby leads to a devastating climax once his dream fails. Fitzgerald uses extended metaphor and sharp diction to depict Gatsby’s crumbling life in his last moments.