Importance Of Reputation In The Crucible

Reputation is one of the major themes in Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible”. People must always act morally, in public and private. Reputation affects their actions and majorly influences the choices they make. While all the people in Salem are concerned with keeping up a good reputation, three stand out above the rest. They are controlled by their need for a good name. John Proctor, Judge Danforth, and Reverend Parris are all extremely concerned with their reputations, which affects their actions throughout “The Crucible”.
All three of these characters decisions are influenced by a desire to have a good reputation. John Proctor is a farmer who lives outside of Salem. He is stern, has a strong set of morals and hates hypocrisy. He is a good, and respectable citizen in the eyes of the town. However he has a hidden sin. His affair he had with Abigail is his one fatal flaw. In the witch trials, innocent people were being hung, and put on trial for being falsely accused of being witches. At the very beginning Abigail revealed to John that there were no witches, and none of the girls were practicing witchcraft or made any deals with the devil. He knew all of this and could of put an end to the hysteria and madness of the witch trials with a confession. But if he
It’s clear that John Proctor, Judge Danforth, and Reverend Parris are all very concerned with their reputations. It drives them throughout the play and has a major affect on most of their decisions. Their situations are very similar, innocents at stake, and the choice between the truth or a good reputation. The importance of a good name in Salem causes them all to value a good reputation over the truth. They all were to concerned with their own with reputations and it drove them to conceal the truth. Concern for their reputation dictated all their choices, making it a very key aspect for John’s, Parris’s, and Danforth’s