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What does John's line, "Your justice would freeze beer", mean in The Crucible?
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John's line, "Your justice would freeze beer," in The Crucible, means that Elizabeth's heart is cold and unforgiving. Despite his apologies for his affair with Abigail, Elizabeth remains suspicious and uncharitable, which John believes makes her bitter and callous. The extremely low freezing temperature of beer highlights the severity of her perceived coldness.
In act 2, Elizabeth informs John that there is a weighty court in Salem and that numerous citizens have already been accused of witchcraft. She also tells her husband that the citizens view Abigail Williams as a saint and encourages him to tell Salem's authority figures that the girls are frauds. As John contemplates how he can prove what Abigail Williams told him because of her revered status throughout the community, he mentions that Abigail revealed this information while they were in a room alone. Given John's past with Abigail, Elizabeth instantly becomes suspicious and accuses him of withholding the truth about his visit to Salem.
Prior to the beginning of the play, John had an affair with Abigail, and Elizabeth discovered his infidelity. Since the affair, Elizabeth has acted cold and callous toward John and dismissed Abigail from their home. Despite John's numerous apologies and attempts to repair his...
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relationship with Elizabeth, she has refused to forgive him and remains suspicious. Proctor mentions that an "everlasting funeral marches round" Elizabeth's heart and demands that she stop judging him. When Elizabeth says that she does not judge John, he responds by saying, "Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer!" (Miller, 59). Given beer's extremely low freezing temperature, John is figuratively saying that Elizabeth's heart is cold. He believes that she lacks charity, gentleness, and grace, and he views her as a bitter, callous woman who will never forgive him for carrying on an affair with Abigail.
Suspicion, paranoia, and their deleterious effects on society form the basis of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, an allegory for the Red Scare period in American history to which Miller and some of his friends and colleagues were subjected.
In Miller’s play, the added element of infidelity serves to exacerbate the tensions that permeate the atmosphere in and around Salem, site of the infamous Witch Trials the serve as the backdrop of The Crucible. The nexus between John Proctor’s infidelity and the hostilities and paranoia surrounding accusations of witchcraft are prevalent in Act II, when Proctor and his aggrieved wife Elizabeth argue about Abigail’s role in both areas.
Elizabeth’s anger and hurt following John’s confession regarding his affair with Abigail is evident in this heated exchanged. Proctor is cognizant of the corrosive effects on his community of the pervasive fear of witches and sorcery, and he is hesitant to condemn his former mistress despite his wife’s protestations. It is Elizabeth’s coldness towards Proctor and Abigail that prompts his observation, “Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer!”
Elizabeth is a victim—a victim of her husband’s infidelity with the somewhat emotionally unstable Abigail. Her victimization, however, blinds her to the evidentiary component of the judicial process that will judge the innocence of those accused of sorcery. Proctor’s comparison of his wife’s demeanor to the extreme cold is an indictment of Elizabeth’s heartlessness when Abigail stands accused of witchcraft.
John believes Elizabeth is somewhat heartless and unforgiving because she judges him for his past indiscretions. However, he feels she led him to this course of action through her behavior toward him. Elizabeth, because of her own low view of herself, judges Proctor more out of displeasure with her own failings as a wife than any misconduct on John's part. The church's influence, too, has much to do with this, but as the play goes on, we learn that Elizabeth's own self-loathing and feelings of inadequacies prompt her to be very cold toward John.
The author is using a colorful figure of speech to express John Proctor's belief that his wife Elizabeth's practice of justice is cold and harsh; lacking mercy and forgiveness.
John Proctor has cheated on Elizabeth, but although he has confessed and repented, she cannot let it go. She says she has forgiven and forgotten, but still acts with bitterness and suspicion. Elizabeth says to John, "I do not judge you...I never thought you but a good man", yet her cool distantness towards him says otherwise, and he responds, "your justice would freeze beer!"
John does not feel that Elizabeth has forgiven him. In answer to her verbal protests to the contrary, he elaborates in explanation,
"Spare me! You forget nothin' and forgive nothin'. Learn charity, woman. I have gone tiptoe in this house...I have not moved from there to there without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart. I cannot speak but I am doubted, every moment judged for lies, as though I come into a court when I come into this house" (Act II, Scene 1).