The Crucible Forgiveness Quotes

Take courage, you must give us all their names. How can you bear to see this child suffering? Look at her, Tituba. Look at her God-given innocence; her soul is so tender; we must protect her, Tituba; the Devil is out and preying on her like a beast upon the flesh of the pure lamb. God will bless you for your help.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. Hale, pointing to Betty on the bed, uses emotional and intimidatory tactics to pressurize Tituba into giving up the names of other "witches." For good measure he uses a vivid animal simile to compare the Devil’s possession of Betty to a beast preying on an innocent lamb. He bribes Tituba with the promise of God’s blessing and forgiveness if she gives up names. Characterizing this as a battle between good and evil, Hale appears to throw objectivity to the wind. As he buys into the idea of the Devil running loose in Salem, he only adds to the panic and hysteria. Those who fell foul of the McCarthy witch hunt for communists in 1950s America had similar pressures applied to them to name names of others.

Spare me! You forget nothin’ and forgive nothin’. Learn charity, woman. I have not moved from there to there without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart. I cannot speak but I am doubted, every moment judged for lies, as though I come into a court when I come into this house!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. John Proctor feels that he is being constantly judged and questioned by his wife Elizabeth over his affair with Abigail. She struggles with forgiving and trusting him. He desperately wants forgiveness and uses personification to describe her continuing coldness towards him – "an everlasting funeral marches round your heart." Whenever he arrives home, he feels like he is stepping into a courtroom and being judged for lies. This is foreshadowing of John’s court appearance in Act 3.

I should have roared you down when first you told me your suspicion. But I wilted, and, like a Christian, I confessed. Confessed! Some dream I had must have mistaken you 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.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. The self-pitying John Proctor is desperate for his wife to forgive him for his affair with Abigail. Here he regrets confessing it to her in the first place, saying that Elizabeth continues to judge him. Anxious to repair their relationship he appeals to her to see past his sin and look for the goodness in him. He uses personification when he says "Some dream I had must have mistaken you for God."

PROCTOR: I would have your forgiveness, Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH: It is not for me to give, John…it come to naught that I should forgive you, if you’ll not forgive yourself. It is not my soul, John, it is yours.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. Near the end of the play a guilt-ridden John Proctor asks for his wife’s forgiveness for his adultery with Abby. Elizabeth tells him that first he must forgive himself. Proctor is his own harshest critic and judge, his wife having told him in Act 2: "The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you." Elizabeth desperately wants her husband to forgive himself.

Whatever you will do, it is a good man does it. I have read my own heart this three month, John. I have sins of my own to count. It needs a cold wife to prompt lechery…I counted myself so plain, so poorly made, no honest love could come to me! Suspicion kissed you when I did; I never knew how I should say my love. It were a cold house I kept!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. As John Proctor agonizes over whether to make falsely confess to witchcraft to save his life, Elizabeth makes her own confession. Describing him as a good man, she admits to being partly to blame for his affair with Abigail by being a cold wife who didn’t know how to love. She uses personification when she describes how "suspicion kissed" her husband when she did. By accepting her owns faults and his goodness, she is finally forgiving John for his infidelity. Elizabeth also uses a metaphor when she decribes how she "read my own heart" like you read a book.

Do what you will. But let none be your judge. There be no higher judge under Heaven than Proctor is! Forgive me, forgive me, John – I never knew such goodness in the world!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. Elizabeth Proctor tells John that she will not judge him if he confesses to witchcraft to escape a death sentence. She also forgives her husband for his infidelity, and begs forgiveness for the part she played by being a cold wife. Despite his faults, he believes that he is a man full of "goodness."

PARRIS: Proctor, Proctor!
HALE: Man, you will hang! You cannot!
PROCTOR: I can. And there’s your first marvel, that I can. You have made your magic now, for now I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. John Proctor goes to the gallows refusing to falsely confess to witchcraft. In doing so he preserves his integrity and finds his "shred of goodness." He chooses not to live a lie. Instead he decides to die with honor with the other good people who will not make a false confession to save their lives. Having initially signed the confession, he tears it up before a horrified Hale and Parris. They cannot believe his refusal to permit it to be publicly posted on the church door as "proof." John’s last speech before being hanged shows that, having been racked with guilt over his lechery, he has at last forgiven himself for his sins. The animal metaphor "dogs" are the figures of authority in the court trying to get John to confess to the bogus charge of witchcraft. Proctor also uses a weaving metaphor in his final dramatic speech.

He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. Elizabeth speaks the play’s last lines about John as he is taken to be hanged, along with Rebecca Nurse and the other innocent Salem accused. She refuses Reverend Hale’s request to plead with her husband to lie and confess to witchcraft in order to be spared hanging. She recognizes that the innocent John prefers to die maintaining his integrity and honesty and she respects that. This quote tells us that she has forgiven John of any sin he has committed and loves him absolutely. Also, he has forgiven himself.
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