Manipulation In The Crucible

In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, the character Reverend John Hale undergoes a profound change during the duration of Act II. Miller first describes Hale as “nearing forty, a tight-skinned, eager-eyed intellectual.” He excludes that Hale isn’t a “smart intellectual” but a man devoted to only thinking about the higher powers of God causing Hale to often be inept with other people’s emotions. Despite the fact that Hale does boast about his extensive knowledge in witchcraft; Hale has been studying demonology his whole life and he is anxious to do things literally by the book-to defeat evil against good as inculcated in the religious books that he brings along with him to the town of Salem. However, when Miller starts to describe Hale’s past …show more content…
One reason for Hale’s easy manipulation is that he knows almost next to nothing about Salem people or the corruption that follows the town. Shortly after he arrives he begins acting arrogant by saying “Have no fear now--we shall find him out if he has come among us, and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face! (page 39 line 19)” While some might say he had no reason to even say such things as a minister he explains that there is no reason to worry because “We cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise. (page 38 line 10)” However, because of Hale’s first assumption and the zeal about witchcraft occurring in the town of Salem; almost everyone including the court believed in the girl’s accusations allowing the girls to get away with manipulating almost everyone- Hale included. This is why when Hale finds out that the Salem witch trials were based on only corruption and not actual witches he left. Hale is supposed to represent light and goodness as a minister of the church and when he finds out that he had the blood of others over his head he left because he couldn’t handle the fact that he’d wrongly condemned people to their death over other people’s