~John Proctor: Hero or Stooge?~

Frankly, I think that John Proctor was neither a hero nor a stooge. He didn't do anything that had a huge effect on what was going on in Salem during the witch trials and he didn't have the courage to stand out as much as Rebecca Nurse. He was more of a gray area than either on one side or the other. Plus, he wanted to live in the end so he was willing to say that he had indeed seen the devil and had done his bidding. But it ultimately didn't matter, because he wanted his pride in the end which still lead to him being hanged since he wouldn't hand over the paper he signed.
Proctor was a character who was there to try to rationalize with the people of Salem and make them see the fallacies the girls were speaking. But at the same time, he still admitted to having had an affair with Abigail back when she used to work in his house for him and his wife Elizabeth, who eventually kicked Abigail out because she had known about the affair but had kept quiet about it because she trusted Proctor to see his faults in the end and realize what he had done was wrong. So this also proves that Proctor wasn't all the good and pure that these people were supposed to be. And later, he told Abigail that their affair had never happened and that he never loved her, as she claims. This only adds insult to injury and makes Abigail want Elizabeth out of the picture once and for all.
That's mostly why I don't identify Proctor as one or the other. He wasn't fully willing to sign a paper and hand it over because he didn't want his name "dragged through the mud" so to speak. But he wasn't willing to die for what he had been charged with either. He just went along with it because he realized that people were still going to believe the girls and they would always end up going back to them, as Mary had done. So in the end, he still died.