PROCTOR - Manly man or just pretending to be?

Herro. So, this blog post is supposed to be about John Proctor, and whether he's a hero or a stooge. Hero = Manly man. Stooge = unmanly man. Hope this doesn't become TL:DR, but I'm not editing this, so whatever.

ALRIGHT. LET'S START THIS OFF.

   I think John Proctor is a very unmanly dude. Unmanly.

I mean, he cheated on his wife, man. That's just not cool. I find Proctor as sort of a.... hypocrite. Actually, he's the ultimate hypocrite. He hates people for being hypocrites, but he's being a hypocrite, so he's hypocritical for other people being hypocritical. That doesn't even make much sense, but let's just go with that.

   I think Proctor tries too hard to be a manly man. I feel like he's constantly pressured to be a manly man because he's sort of this "ideal man" to the townspeople. He's supposed to be this nice looking (I'm assuming, since he actually got the opportunity to cheat), strong, supposedly manly guy who takes good care of his family. This pressure of having to keep up this "image" eats at him, which is why he feels so guilty about doing such an unmanly thing.

By this point, you, the reader, might wonder why I think this way. After all, he might just feel guilty because he did something wrong. I don't think it's as simple as that. Because of this image he's supposed to hold, the fact that he did commit adultery hits his community that much harder. Think of it this way. If a leader of a country was found doing something immoral like stealing, it'd have a much stronger impact then if I stole something. After all, nobody cares about what I do because I'm insignificant. No one knows me. But when everyone knows you, there's pressure. Lots and lots of it. Any minor slip-up can be blown up to epic proportions. With a big unmanly move like this, anything could happen. Add that all on top of the fact that the Puritans are incredibly zealous and are willing to use death as a punishment, you can see why John is scared and guilty. 

    There's also the fact that his wife is chill about it. She knows he cheated on him, but she doesn't do anything about it. This lack of action also eats away at Proctor. If you've ever done something that leans significantly towards the "wrong" side, you'll know that not getting a reaction is hard to handle. You don't get to argue. It's like they're silently accusing you, which Proctor feels. He actually accuses his wife of accusing him when she never really said anything about it. That's his consciousness poking him. 

  All this, along with the fact that he can't just deal with it, leads me to the conclusion - PROCTOR IS VERY, VERY UNMANLY. I think the question "hero or stooge" is stupid. Why? Because I don't think he's done anything that's worth calling him a hero for. He has the face of a manly man, but on the inside, he's unmanly.

Well, hopefully this wasn't a wall of text. Hope it wasn't extremely boring, and if it was, sorry for the long read. :P I just really wanted to use unmanly and manly as many times as I could because the subject worked so well with it.