"She only pretended to faint, your Excellency. They're all marvelous pretenders."
Proctor seems to have hit on something very important in this quote, which is that not everything can be trusted in the court... This is something that the reader finds very obvious but the characters in the story seem to be blind to it, but Proctor has hit on it here, and he knows that most of what is going on is just pretend and acts made to trick the court. The struggle now becomes convincing everyone else that their displays are false, and figuring out what is an act and what is for real.
"This is a court of law, Mister. I'll have no effrontery here!"
This quote really just shows the irony of the situation and the court. He says he won't have any effrontery but really the whole court has been tricks and the gall of some people to lie and deceive them. This shows how blind Danforth and the people of Salem are because they can't see what's really going on in front of them, and the irony of this quote shows that.
I agree to what you say in your first quote. It is very interesting how people in the court take everything as hard fact and are so blind to the truth of what is happening. At this point things have gone too far and changing the courts position is almost impossible. Also it speaks to what an outside view can say. As you said, the readers can see the truth of the matter very clearly, but the characters in the story cannot.
ReplyDeleteYour second quote really hits at the root of the problem during these times i think... its like you say, the entire court is basing their judgement off of some girl, who says that shes seen evil spirits and things... they dont take into account rationality, but instead just act on fear and only respond well to answers they think are true
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