In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, the theme of judgment occupies a significant place. The word judgment has numerous definitions. Two of the possible definitions can be put in the context of the play. The first one would be applied to the judicial system: “The act of determining, as in courts of law, what is conformable to law and justice” [1] ; and the second one to the society and individuals: “an opinion formed or a decision reached in the case of a disputed, controversial or doubtful matter” [2] . Knowing these definitions, Arthur Miller’s way of treating the theme of judgment by the society and by individuals in his play is going to be analyzed. Although judging can be seen as negative, is it necessary to the management of a society as it pushes people to take care of the image they are giving of themselves.
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In every society, there is a way to act and there are rules that apply to the majority of the society. When people grow up under certain values and traditions, they tend to think that only those are valuable and everything different will therefore raise suspicions in their minds. Using the example of the way Salemites used to live, we have clear examples of judgment. For being people who always thought in terms of religion, in other words, they were Puritans, every act of an individual was judged according to the Bible and the Ten Commandments. One example of a commandment is “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, which John Proctor has not respected. This is why he has been harshly judged by his wife. His act was considered as morally wrong and religion wise was considered as an affront.
“Proctor: No more! I should have roared you down when you first told me your suspicion. But I wilted, and, like a Christian, I confessed. Confessed! Some dream I had must have mistaken for God that day. But you’re not, you’re not, and let you remember it! Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not” (45).
What Miller says here is that no human being is flawless and that it is a pretentious act to criticize others when we are not clean of mistakes. We can relate this to the hypocritical observance of religious and moral laws, in other words, to pharisaism. When Proctor tells his wife Rebecca that he has mistaken her for God but she is not, he means that only God can judge him and that he made a mistake by letting her morally condemn him at first. This gives us an overview of what Miller thinks of people judging their pairs without judging themselves first. He denounces the way people tend to only see the bad side of others after they have made one mistake instead of trying to know what have happened and consider the goodness of that person.
In Salem, we also get an overview of how people perceive others because they are different from them. Taking the case of Goody Osburn and Sarah Good, we know that they were accused because they were poor and old, therefore, lacking strength and position in the society. “… For she sleeps in ditches, and so very old and poor… So many time, Mr Proctor, she come to this very door, beggin’ bread and a cup of cider…”(47-48)They were considered as being part of the outcasts of the society which made of them good preys for accusations. At the end of the first act, Tituba and Betty accuse numerous women of working with the Devil: “I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!”(39). All these people are victims of the society and are judged by the others because they act differently from them. Salemites were very concerned about other people’s life stories and when those excluded them from it or acted slightly secretive, they automatically perceived them in the worse ways possible. We know that Salem was a theocracy and that one particular aspect of a theocracy is unity among the different citizens. This is a plausible explanation of why people were being overly curious about their neighbors’ stories in Salem. An example of wrong judgment is the witchcraft accusations which was a consequence of the girls not knowing how to explain what they were doing in the woods. Goody Osburn and the other girls were named as “witches” by Betty, Abigail and Tituba because they did not bend to the rules or were different from the typical woman of that time. This was what made their accusations sound credible.
At the end of the play, when Proctor was asked to sign his name on the confession paper and he refused, we know it’s because he fears judgment from people in his town:
“Proctor: I have confessed myself! Is there no good penitence but it be public? God does not need my name nailed upon the church! God sees my name; God knows how black my sins are! It is enough! (114)”
He refuses to sign this paper because he is afraid of how people would see him after he confesses he has committed with the Devil. He does not want to be thought of as a liar. What we understand from that is that Miller says that people don’t have the right to judge others but still, the way they see them is chief to their life and is determinant to the way they will be treated in their society.
In the case of the trials in the court, we can see that even people whose minds shouldn’t be biased are influenced by other people’s opinions and the way they perceive the problem. If we take the cases of the Salem witch trials, we can see that the judges Hathorne and Danforth, who should directly apply the law of the Supreme God, adjudge according to their level of compassion towards the accused or the accuser. Judgment by the law is a very controversial subject in the play. Mostly because we know that people say that it’s God who judges and not any human being, because no human being can measure someone’s sins as God can. God is in people’s minds and hearts and as Proctor says, “God knows how black my sins are! It is enough (114).” This makes plain what Elizabeth told Proctor: “The Magistrate sits in your heart that judges you (45).” The fact that God is everywhere and in everybody’s minds and hearts is a way to say that he is aware of every of our ideas or feelings and, that is what gives him the right to form a supreme opinion on people. Individuals surrounding us are not entirely entitled to judge us because they don’t know us at a hundred percent and they don’t know the color of our souls. When someone is not entirely aware of a story, his opinion is partial and therefore, not totally valuable.
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Arthur Miller’s way of describing the people who are supposed to be the representatives of God on earth is ironic because not only he makes them sound wrong, but also, he describes a morally illogical procedure in their accusations. Therefore, he denounces the system and the way people are overzealous when in control of a dominant power. Judgment is always a subjective act, whether it is conscious or not, on which our knowledge of facts get mixed with our emotions and assumptions. Miller’s point of view would be that only God can judge without this mixture of emotions and assumptions to objective facts. This brings us to think about the real role of judges in the society. Knowing that we are living in a world where corruption leads, it is imperative to think about the value and the objectiveness of the judges’ decisions.
By showing a totally different world and way of thinking than that of our own, Arthur Miller puts the reader in a position where he too judges others, and in this case, it is the people of Salem who are being judged instead of judging. The reader has difficulties understanding the differences in perception and thinking. Therefore, he sees the actions that are happening in Salem as maybe immoral compared to what his time enables him to understand. Arthur Miller then emphasizes on the subjectivity of judgments. In other words, every judgment is based upon how we perceive the subject and how much we understand it.
Being aware of how others might see them, people tend to pay more attention to the way they conduct themselves in the society. This leads to them evaluating and criticizing their actions in order to define clear lines of their identity. It is possible to attach identity to the name of one. One example of that is Proctor’s his decision not to sign the confession paper because it would mean attaching his name to lies which would have future and present effects of him.
“Proctor: Because it is my name! because I cannot have another in my life! because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave my name! (115)”
Proctor fights for his reputation and his integrity which means he wants to be well seen by people and to be respected therefore, he tears the confession down and by doing that act, refuses any wrong and unfair stain on his name. He is still referring to himself as a name and he claims that it is the only thing that remains to him.
Arthur Miller makes it clear that God is the only one who can judge the human being in his play. He sends his message by the mean of a spokesperson which is Proctor. To emphasize his point of view, he uses other characters such as judges Hathorne and Danforth, and also Elizabeth. However, these characters are people who judge others and it’s by putting their flaws in the limelight that Miller explains his point of view which is: human beings are not capable of right judgment. Being one of the most important themes of the play, we can say that Miller is making a critic of society and foreshadows the place of other individual’s opinions in someone’s life.
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