The Truth about Danforth
If you have started to read my Danforth daughter fic you will know that I strongly support him as a character. It disturbs me though that most people think he's conniving and merciless. I personally think he was just trying to save his butt and the others around him. If you really read the book in his perspective (as I did) you will find he is really more complex than people give him credit for. Danforth really didn't want to hang people and he was really starting to believe Proctor he was going to condemn Abby. Abby was just so manipulative that he couldn't help but believe her it wasn't his fault.
Danforth as a person was able to show love he just was so bewildered and scared that he couldn't do anything to get himself out of the hole he dug for himself. It's not that he was prejudice or had a lot of bigotry. He like all of us would, got scared because he didn't know what to do those kinds of things scared him. His reactions are no different to one of ours killing a fly with a swatter, an ant with poison or drowning a spider in the bath tub. That's how they viewed witches, that's the kind of fear they had towards them if you look at him that way he really isn't that bad.
In conclusion Danforth is just an average guy who got put against his will in what he thought was going to be an easy situation. He just got too scared for his own good and made some uneducated decisions. The real people who would have been damned are Putnam, Abigail and Hathorne. Thank you.
Please forgive this spontaneous blurb. I was just reading things on Wikipedia and other sites that were bothering me about my favorite character.