The Crucible - 2 : Characters

I still remember when I took the True Colors test in Heath last year. I think they are pretty legitimate in their answers. They make a lot of sense when you think about it. When I come to think of the most important characters in the Crucible within the context of happy little colors, it seems clear enough to me.

Proctor is gold, I think. Golds are typically very family centered and organized. He is willing to soil his own reputation in order to save his wife, showing how much he cares about her (Miller 80). People with gold personalities often care a great deal about their families. I believe that golds would act more like blues when they are under stress, and perhaps Proctor was under a lot of stress with his wife when he had his affair with Abigail. Having a lover seems more like a blue sort of thing to do than a gold kind of thing - blues being the type of people who care most about relationships with other people. If he were really a blue, I doubt he would be putting Abigail on ice as well as he has by this part of the play. The play mentions that he has a sort of moral superiority about him, and this is keeping with a gold personality as well (Miller 20).

When it comes to Abigail, I believe she has more of an orange personality.  Orange people are most interested in being active and having a good time. She danced at night with other girls at a heathen ceremony because it seemed like it would be fun and entertaining (Miller 11). This shows that she was more concerned with having a good time than with her family - whose reputation she put in jeopardy -, the rules -which she obviously broke-, or much of anything else. She seems very uninclined toward learning, so that definitely rules out green. I think that she is really just a very immature orange type. She is not a very likeable character in my opinion.

I believe that Rebecca has a very blue personality. Even though she has not really said much so far in the play, every time she speaks her words seem to be very comforting. She really cares about Betty and her illness in the first act, even though she knows that Betty had been out dancing in the middle of the night (Miller 39). When in the second act it mentions that she was arrested, the reader cannot but feel sympathy and worry for the kind old woman. I really like Rebecca's character.

The Putnams were very hard to decide one color for. At best, they will have to be a mixture of at least two. They put a lot of effort in their plans for how to best get their revenge on people who they feel have done them wrong. I am not sure if this would be more green or more orange because of how hard they work at their schemes. On one hand, their schemes revolve around who they think has done their family wrong in some circumstances, like when a family member of theirs -due to some neighbors- was not allowed to be minister (Miller 15). On the other hand, some of their plots are purely about economic gain. Anyway, I think the Putnams are a very close call between green and gold. I cannot place them into one category.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York, NY: Penguin, 1996. Print.