In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, both pride and excessive pride influence the characters throughout the play. Excessive pride is being overly confident of one's own self worth. Throughout, pride influences the actions, reactions, and emotions of the characters in such ways to establish the outcome of the story. Three characters are impelled by their pride. Hale, who takes pride in his ability to detect witchcraft; Elizabeth Proctor, whose pride makes forgiving her husband difficult; Proctor, whose excessive pride causes him to overlook reality and the truth.
Hale is an intellectual man who takes pride in his ability to detect witchcraft. He was called to Salem to analyze their situation. "This is a beloved errand for him; on being called here to ascertain witchcraft he felt the pride of one specialist whose unique knowledge has at least been publically called for."
Hale takes this job to a personal level when the crisis takes a turn for the worse. He pleads with the people convicted of witchcraft to confess. He feels he is responsible for their lives because his purpose was to rid the town of witchcraft, not innocent lives. He beholds himself a failure when he cannot convince the accused to confess. His well justified pride is broken. He came into this village like a bride groom to his beloved, bearing gifts of high religion; the very crowns of holy law I brought, and what I touched with my bright confidence, it died; and where I turned the eye of my great faith, blood flowed up. He urges Elizabeth not to let her pride interfere with her duty as a wife, as it did with his own duty.
Elizabeth Proctor is a bitter woman who has been hurt deeply by her husband and her pride adds more strain to the already unstable relationship. Her husband, Proctor, only wants her to find complete forgiveness in her heart and to put the incident behind her. She tells him, "...it come not that I should forgive you, if you'll not forgive yourself."
She cannot grasp the fact...