Of course, everyone changes. It is said that the only item of state that does not change is the fact that state changes. The truth of this maxim is obvious to me when I look around. All the events in the world can only look the same when I have taken off my glasses.
The Reverend Hale undergoes a complete change in The Crucible. Hale's transformation, though, is not of the everyday sort, and I think that it is the most interesting and important change in the play, and that it is an example of one of the most important changes the world can see.
When Hale first enters the play, he is convinced that he is holy. Those people who are convinced that they are holy are generally the ones that are the farthest from it. A parallel may be drawn between this seeming contradiction and the old Daoist saying quoted at the opening of this paper. The only holy ones are the ones that are humble.
When Hale first enters the play, he is convinced that he is well-educated and that he has incredible devil-detection skills. His quip about his books being heavy with the weight of authority is typical of his early attitude, and is easy to criticize. How can the actions off spirits be calculable? Traditionally, it is the spirits that account for the curious events that science cannot explain, rather than science accounting for the spirits.
To be more succinct, the Reverend Hale is a flaming hypocrite when he first enters the play. Luckily for the resolution of the play, Hale changes. From the moment he quits the court, he is truly a much better man. He helps the prisoners however he can, and is humbled. Even a bit before then, he questions whether the court is doing anything that is good. He starts questioning on the night when Rebecca Nurse and Elizabeth Proctor are arrested. At some point, he realizes that the church can be used for evil. This realization is extremely important for any churchgoer, and absolutely vital for a minister. In my humble opinion, it is this realization that causes the biggest change in Hale.
Hale does not go out of action once he comes to that realization. Soon, he has quit the court and busies himself with the aid of the prisoners. His aid is not always well-recieved. John Proctor doesn't seem to fully accept Hale's advice on giving a wrongful confession, for his own reasons. This fact does not mean that Hale did not have a good idea--to keep Proctor alive. It merely means that Proctor values his pride above his life. Is he Right in doing so? His decision is truly a religious issue: it is unlikely that anybody will agree about it. I feel that Proctor's decision certainly makes for a good plot, but might not have been very wise. It has been said that immature people want to die nobly for a cause, while mature people want to live humbly for one. Here, Hale comes out ahead of Proctor in my book.
Even with their disagreements about the value of human life and pride, Hale probably felt quite a lot like Proctor at the end: "...I am not worth the dust on the feet of those who have hanged." At the end, Reverend Hale is holy. Is it a happy ending?