The term "central action" is being used here in what I take to be its Aristotelian sense; one central objective that provides the play's plot structure with a beginning, a middle, and an end--when the objective is attained, the play is over. This central action may be describe--in the case of The Crucible--as "to find John Proctor’s soul", where the term "Soul" is understood to mean Proctor’s integrity, his sense of self-respect, what he himself variously calls his "honesty" and (finally) his "name’. Proctor lost his soul, in this sense of the term, when he committed the crime of lechery with Abigail, and thus as the play opens there is wanted only a significant triggering incident to start Proctor actively on the search that will lead ultimately to his death. That this search for Proctor’s soul will lead through the vagaries of a witch—hunt, a travesty of justice, and a clear choice between death and life without honour is simply the given circumstance of the play. Thinking in these terms, then, it is possible to trace the development of this central action in a straightforward and rather elementary manner.

The structure of the play can conveniently be analyzed in terms of the familiar elements of a well-made play. The initial scenes involving Parris, Abigail, the Putnams, and the other girls serve quite satisfactorily the demands of simple exposition, and pave the way smoothly for the entrance of John Proctor. We learn quickly and yet naturally that a group of girls under Abby’s leadership have conjured the Devil and that now at least two of them have experienced hysterical reactions that are being widely interpreted in terms of witchcraft. We also learn, upon Proctor’s entrance, of the sexual attraction that still exists between him and Abby, and of the consummation of this attraction that has left John feeling that he has lost his soul. The inciting incident then occurs when Abigail assures John that the girls’ hysteria has "naught to do with witchcraft", a bit of knowledge that is very shortly to try John’s honest and lead him inevitably to his death.

The rising action of the play continues, then, through the arrival of Hale, Abby’s denunciation of certain of the Puritan women (taking her clue from Tituba’s success) in order to remove any taint of guilt from herself, and eventually, in the next scene to the accusation of witchcraft being directed at Elizabeth Proctor. The significant point here, however, is that the rising action continues through the bulk of the courtroom scene, as horror piles upon horror, accusation upon accusation, and complication upon complication, until the action reaches not a climax but a turning point when Elizabeth, who purportedly cannot tell a lie, does in an attempt to save her husband. This action on her part constitutes a turning point because, from that moment on, Proctor’s fate is sealed; no device short of a totally unsatisfactory deus ex machina can save him from his inevitable doom. The central action of the play is not yet completed, however; Proctor not yet found his soul, and even moderately skillful playing of the play’s final scene can demonstrate quite clearly that this struggle goes on right up to the moment at which Proctor rips up his confession and chooses death rather than dishonour. Thus, this prison scene does not, as some critic have charged, constitute some sort of extended denouement that cannot possibly live up in intensity to the excitement of the courtroom scene, but rather the scene is, in technical terms, the falling action of the play, moving inevitably from the turning point to the climax.

It is the business of the actor playing Proctor to convey to the audience the fact that signing the confession and then refusing to hand it over to Danforth is not, as has so often been charged, a delaying action and a complication on Miller’s part, but rather a continuing and agonizing search on Proctor’s part for his honesty -- for the course of action that will be truest to his own honour and will recover for him his lost soul. In a dilemma for which there is no simple solution, Proctor first sees the efficacy of Hale’s argument, that once life is gone there is no further or higher meaning. Feeling that his honour has long since been compromised anyway, Proctor seriously feels a greater sense of dishonour in appearing to "go like a saint" as Rebecca and the ethers so, than in frankly facing up to his own dishonesty and saving his life. On the strength of this argument, he signs the confession. Yet, as Proctor stands there looking at his name on the paper, we have a visual, tangible stage metaphor for the struggle that is going on within him. Proctor, unable fully to express the significance of his own plight, cries out:

The audience must see that this cry for his name is still the same search that has been at the heart of the entire play, and here it has reached not some kind of anticlimax, but rather the climactic moment of the play.

But in stating outright that his confession is a lie, Proctor triggers in Danforth the one reaction that seals his own doom. For Danforth, however narrow-minded and bigoted he may be, does indeed believe in the fundamental fact of witchcraft, and he cannot allow a confession that is frankly and openly a lie: