Reverend John Hale is a character from the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. He’s a hypocrite.

Oh, sorry, I think I’m going to fast. He is the reverend from Beverly, called to Salem to investigate for witchcraft. He is an expert in this field, and puts much emphasis on the justice of the jury and his decisions.

An unbalanced scale. Photo by OpenClipart-Vectors via Flickr cc

“Proctor, the court is just.” (Miller 73)
“Let you rest upon the justice of the court.” (Miller 67)
“My duty is to add to the godly wisdom of the court.” (Miller 64)

He repeatedly states that the court will be fair, and that he will add to that by finding out if there is really any connection to the supernatural. At first he pointedly says that there must be proof, and that “the Devil is precise.”

However, when Elizabeth Proctor’s name is mentioned in court, he visits her and her husband. He asks them—Proctor, specifically—many questions, of how Christian their household is, why they don’t go to church ofte, and if they could recite the Ten Commandments. It seems like Reverend Hale had already begun suspecting John Proctor even though there was no real proof of this. Yeah, so just.

Moreover, when a poppet with a needle in its belly is found in the Proctor home, Elizabeth was arrested, even though Mary Warren admitted it was hers. Hale again insisted that the court was just, despite the fact that Mary wasn’t even questioned any further when she clearly had something to do with the poppet. Hale chose to trust the word of Abigail Williams over the actual evidence, while actually doubting the court’s justice himself, making him a hypocrite.

This relates to the Shadowhunters books by Cassandra Clare. The third series, The Dark Artifices, quite possibly shows the most corruption and hypocrisy of the Clave, the government for Shadowhunters.

Just as Hale was being pressured to find witches, the Clave was being pressured by the public to hold someone accountable for the Dark War. And despite multiple witnesses of their loyalty and their courage against demons, Mark Blackthorn was abandoned to Faerie and forbidden to be rescued, and his sister Helen was exiled to an island in the middle of nowhere.

John Proctor was already known to be a non-believer of witches, and Mark and Helen were known to be half-faerie (many faeries had sided with the evil demons in the Dark War). Hale was still saying the court was being just in arresting Elizabeth. And the Clave yet claimed to be following the Accords and Laws, when they were clearly just making excuses for their prejudice.