John Proctor, Hero or Stooge?

What is a hero? A hero is someone who saves the day, who does good in the world, rescues a few damsels in distress, an overall good guy. Or is he? Maybe a hero is just a guy who was in the right place at the right time. A guy who’s rich, handsome, influential, etc. A hero can be so many things, but when it comes down to it, he does something good, right?

What is a stooge? A fool. No one really expects anything of the stooge, he just sort of runs around and everyone rolls their eyes and dismisses him. No one thinks of themselves as the stooge, but I think everyone’s been a stooge at one point or another. Plus stooges are the most lovable, everyone likes an underdog.

So what’s the difference between a hero and a stooge? I’d argue a lot less than one would think. Little things differentiate the two; circumstance, money, good looks. There’s always that part in a super hero’s tale when nobody believes him or the general public downright hate him, much like they would a stooge. Never the less, something happens allowing him to switch over from stooge to hero.

In John Proctor’s case, he was able to become a hero. First, he had influence in the town. People looked up to John before the witch trials started. He also is rather good looking, making him the perfect fit to play the hero. We can all view John Proctor as the hero because we look back on the times and people of Salem as being extreme and misguided. They persecuted innocent people, which we are naturally against as Americans (the government seems to forget that from time to time, but that’s another story…), so John Proctor can only be thought of as the hero. He went against this crazed society and stuck up for people who couldn’t stick up for themselves.  So he’s a hero in our eyes, of course. But then, we are the society that prevailed. The winners write the history books. If the Puritan ideal had prevailed, we’d all think John Proctor worse than a stooge, more like a crazy lunatic getting in the way of God’s will. The label, hero or stooge, depends less upon what he actually did but which society prevails to think of him as a hero or a stooge.

In other, more ‘normal’ circumstances John would not have been the hero. He cheated on his wife with the Reverend’s niece, who was still a girl. John would have been the sorry loser caught on ‘Cheaters’ by his wife in a crappy motel with his face blurred out and would run around cursing the camera in the parking lot. We love to hate cheaters. It all comes back to circumstance. Only the craziness of the witch trials could save John from such reality television defamation and catapult him into heroics. It could also be argued that if John hadn’t cheated with Abby the whole thing wouldn’t have happened. Abby wouldn’t have been so drawn into the whole witch craft thing and wouldn’t have urged the girls to participate in the rituals and she wouldn’t have drunk blood, etc. The whole thing could have been avoided. But we say “It’s okay that you inadvertently caused all the madness, John. You tried to save everybody with some less than fool proof evidence. That’s all that really matters. Thanks a bunch.”

To answer the question; John Proctor is a hero, at least in this story. But the point is that the term hero or stooge can’t be viewed as a simple thing. People are weird and complex and beautiful and ugly all at the same time. So maybe no one’s a hero, maybe we’re all just people, and what we are depends on perspective. Except for Superman and Chuck Norris, they’re definitely heroes.

Maybe my take on this was a little bit…cynical...or maybe its more critical? Not sure. Thanks for reading anyways,

Gianna