Consequences Of Pride In The Crucible

Pride and Its Consequences

“Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.”― George Eliot. When you think about pride, you think of something that will benefit yourself or others. In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible this is not always the case. There are many instances where pride is a very negative trait Not all of the pride shown throughout The Crucible will benefit those who have it. John Proctor, the court and Judge Danforth, and Reverend Parris all have pride, but they don’t realize how their pride can and will negatively affect others around them, especially if they don’t think about their actions and the effects of them.

During the whole play we hear John Proctor say that his wife has never told a lie in her life. We also hear many times about John’s affair with Abigail, which Elizabeth knows about. John is a well liked person by the town of Salem, and he takes great pride in

During Act 1 his daughter Betty is acting very strangely and many suspect that it is witchcraft. But Reverend Parris, being the stubborn and prideful person that he is, refuses to admit this saying “No. No, there be no unnatural cause here.”(Miller 833). The only reason that he says this instead of accepting this and getting help for his daughter is that he has so much pride in his work and reputation. If he was really concerned for his daughter, he would’ve agreed with everybody else and had somebody come look at Betty much sooner than he did. Of course we know that Betty was just sleeping and she was faking the whole time but Parris did not know this. Instead, he was too concerned about what people would think of him. Because as the town Reverend he can't have witchcraft in his house or his reputation would be tarnished. This shows pride in a negative way because it shows that Parris is more concerned with his pride and reputation than he is with his own