John Proctor- Hero or Stooge?

A hero is defined as “ The chief male character in a book, play, or movie, who is typically identified with good qualities, and with whom the reader is expected to sympathize.”.  A stooge is defined as “ a person who serves merely to support or assist others, particularly in doing unpleasant work”. In my eyes, John Proctor is both a hero and a stooge. He showed heroic qualities in his final hours of life as he never ever lied in saying that he was a witch. Although his life could’ve been saved if he had untruthfully “confessed” practicing witch craft, he refused to oblige and died a martyr of some sort. John Proctor didn’t always portray the qualities of a hero, he was unfaithful to his wife, but in the end he sacrificed his life for others, and their lives were potentially saved. John didn’t greedily save his own life and lie about others. He didn’t send innocent people to their death beds, and instead he attempted to end the horrific sequence of arresting, lying, and killing in Salem. In similar ways, John Proctor is a “stooge” as well. Although John to solely survive to “assist” others, he died in order to save others. His death was unnecessary and did not need to happen, but it did happen.

Arrivals, There Goes the Neighborhood

When I heard the title for this blog entry, I obviously thought about the situation between the Native Americans and the Europeans. I thought about how the Europeans thought it was ok to invade the Natives' property in an effort to do things like convert them to their religion and take over them in order to make money. Some of the Europeans sought to help the Natives and simply explore, not to destroy them and their land for their own egotistical reasons. In realizing that, I understood that some Europeans were there to help and some were there for other reasons. After understanding and realizing those things, two questions arose in my mind. At what point is it not ok to "invade" someone's space? At what point does it become too territorial and acquisitive to not allow others to join your community, or to disrespect them? It becomes wrong to invade someone's space, property, or "neighborhood" when the action of going there is brought on by something bad or harmful. Europeans like Christopher Columbus took over the Native People and treated them as if they weren't human beings. And on the contrary, it becomes too territorial to not accept someone when they have the intention of bringing something good, and not bringing upon harmful things. Those two questions can still be asked today and will be relevant in the future as well. The subject of invasion and being territorial has been proved timeless, I guess you could say it's a part of human nature.

ME

First of all, my name is Luci and I'm from Chicago. I was born and raised here and it's one of my favorite cities in the world. I used to play volleyball and I'm not completely positive what clubs and teams I want to join this year. I'm interested in a variety of things, ranging from sciences like biology and chemistry, to law. When I'm older I'd either like to go to law school or medical school  and definitely to Georgetown for undergrad because a lot of my family went there. In terms of high school and Whitney Young, I'm excited for all of my classes this year. I am eager to learn this school year and work hard to get good grades, which carries out to all of my classes. I am primarily excited for English and chemistry this year! Both subjects are interesting, but English is set apart because it is probably the only class this year that I will be able to express myself through my writing and not just work with quantitative facts and scientific/ historic research.  More specifically for this class, since I have an interest in writing, I'd like to improve my skills so that writing becomes more of a habit and everyday skill, than something I feel slightly unnatural doing.  I didn't write much in my english class last year, but it sounds like we'll be writing a lot this year, so I'm really excited for that.