John Proctor's Reputation In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

John Proctor in The Crucible is faced with a decision; to live with a lie, or die for his belief. John Proctor made the best decision possible, to die for his belief and carry his good name. In doing this, he secures his children’s future by leaving a good reputation. He only has one name in his lifetime, so he chose to die to keep it instead of lie and tear his reputation down for himself and his future kin. Your name is legacy, and is more important than life itself.

Although life is important, when compared to your name, it's value changes. John Proctor made the best decision he could, a person's name is more important than life itself because a good reputation is important in many aspects in life. Some of the aspects would be including getting a job, social life, and other factors for your children’s future. However the fact that you cannot change your name once it's looked at in a negative light has even more of an impact.
You also only have one chance to make that name correspond with positive reactions versus being shone in a negative light. Your name is your legacy, your pride, and your future. John Proctor knows this, and is very adamant in keeping his good name specifically in this quote from The Crucible, “ Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” (Act IV; 284-290) In a way, I can understand how people may view this argument differently. Life is important, without it you couldn’t have built up or torn down your name and identity. But my counter-argument to this would be that there’s no point to life if you have a horrible name and