sharp tongue for anybody who thinks he can be made a fool of. But he makes a fool of himself by being so ready to scrap all the time. He's 83, and set in his ways. In any other play he'd be a comic figure: the stock character of the crotchety old man. But this play is not a comedy, and for all his comic characteristics, Giles Corey is destroyed along with all the other victims of the witch madness.Giles is more than a stubborn old geezer. Life was extremely hard in those days. Just to be alive at age 83 was in itself a remarkable achievement. But Giles shows little sign of running out of steam: John Proctor thinks nothing of asking Giles' help in dragging his lumber home.Is Giles as bull-headed as he at first appears? Before he married Martha, his third wife (he buried the other two), he had little time for church. But now he's learned his commandments and makes a serious effort to pray. In Act I he passes up a perfect chance to twit his hated neighbor Thomas Putnam--Putnam claims that Proctor's lumber belongs to him--and instead stays to hear what the learned Reverend Hale has to say. Giles may be slow to change his mind, but he's not against learning something new.But just because he's slow, it doesn't mean he's dumb. He may never understand the subtleties of demonology, but "thirty-three time in court" has taught Giles Corey how to recognize greed when he sees it. And he knows enough about the law to keep silent when he is formally charged with witchcraft. By not answering the indictment, he dies a good Christian under the law, and the court cannot confiscate his property, as it did with the other "witches." In this way his sons inherit, and he keeps his land out of Putnam's clutches.In the end, the way he dies tells the most about him:Great stones they lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. They say he give them but two words. "More weight," he says. And died.As Elizabeth Proctor says, "It were a fearsome man, Giles Corey."^...
