Since Proctor went to jail, over one hundred people have restored their lives by “confessing” to witchcraft, but the town is in shambles. There are orphans, cows wandering all over the place, and people bickering over who gets whose property.
Judge Hathorne and Danforth call upon Elizabeth, still imprisoned, to talk to her husband to see if she can get him to confess. When Elizabeth finally agrees to speak with Proctor (who has been in the dungeon, separated from the other accused), the married couple finally gets a few private moments alone in the courthouse. In these warm exchanges, Elizabeth says she will not judge what Proctor decides to do, and affirms that she believes he is a good man. While Elizabeth will not judge Proctor, she herself cannot confess to witchcraft, as it would be a lie.
Proctor asks for Elizabeth’s forgiveness, and she says he needs to forgive himself. Elizabeth also says she realizes she had been a “cold wife,” which might have driven him to sleep with Abigail. She asks him for forgiveness and says she has never known such goodness in all her life as his. At first, this gives Proctor the determination to live, and he confesses verbally to Danforth and Hathorne.
But Proctor cannot bring himself to sign the “confession.” Knowing that the confession will be pinned to the church door, for his sons and other community members to see, is too much for Proctor to bear. Moreover, he will not incriminate anyone else in the town as a witch. He believes it should be enough to confess verbally and to only incriminate himself. When the court refuses this, Proctor, deeply emotional, tears up the written confession and crumples it. Shocked, Rev. Hale and Rev. Parris plead with Elizabeth to talk sense into her husband, but she realizes that this is, at last, his moment of redemption: “He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!” And so he goes to his death. The curtain falls as we hear the drum beat just before John Proctor is hanged.
1. The most obvious example of how it is more noble to die with integrity than to live with compromised principles that harm others is that of Proctor, and his refusal to confess. In Act IV, Proctor is pressured to confess to witchcraft. However, he knows that he has not commited that crime. Initially, he signs. However, afterwards he retracts. This idea most likely relates to the McCarthy era because during this time period, people were harrased due to their beliefs. Moreover, they were also pressured to confess to wrongdoings and to retract their ideological statements.
2. Hale is different from the other ministers in that he truly wants to get to the truth. Although Hale is initially convinced of witchcraft, when he changes his mind he attempts to rectify his opinions. This suggests that he has more integrity and less pride than other ministers who cannot accept that they are wrong. However, by the time he wants to rectify his actions, it is too late.
3. Arthur Miller wanted to show that McCarthy's Senate committee operated as a witch hunt. This means that they were persecuting people due to their political beliefs, even when there was no evidence of wrongdoing. The fact that the people in the play have no evidence of witchcraft, and yet decide to kill people compares to how McCarthy was willing to destroy people's careers even when there was no real evidence of damage caused by them.
4. The play suggests that the motives behind McCarthy's political "witch hunts" were more related to pride, vanity and closed-mindedness than to any real political danger. Miller implies that McCarthy persecuted those with particular ideologies simply because he disagreed with them, and not because he had any real evidence of wrongdoings.
