Allegories are stories that have more than one meaning. For example, The Lorax was about a boy who saves the world from destroying itself due to greed; the allegory for The Lorax is that in today's society people are greedy and don’t care about the environment. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is an allegory for the Red Scare in the McCarthy Era because they were both made of fake claims, fear, and false confessions. Fake Claims were a big part of the McCarthy communist era because if you accused someone of being a communist you would a safe from government even if it is not true. In the McCarthy era Joseph McCarthy claimed he had a list of 81 people that worked for the government but were also communists. “McCarthy accuses 81 people of being a communist.” (jigsaw chart) McCarthy told everyone that he had that list when in the end, none of the people that were on the list were communists. This connects to The Crucible in the same way. In The Crucible if you accused another person of being a witch then you were safe from accusation and the court. “For murder Rebecca is charged! For the marvelous and supernatural murder of Goody Putnam’s babies.”(71) Rebecca was charged with supernatural murder against Goody Putnam's babies. …show more content…
Joseph McCarthy wanted to get more people to vote for him in his presidential election so he told the citizens of the United States that communism was taking over as they were speaking and that he would end it. This caused a lot of fear in the citizens causing them to rise with McCarthy to “end” communism. “Fear of communism lead a rise on obscure US senator who was Joseph McCarthy.”(Jigsaw Puzzle) McCarthy thought that by doing this he would get more votes in his presidential election. In The Crucible the whole town had fear in the court so nobody would rebel against it. “We cannot blink it more. There is a prodigious fear in this court in the
The crucible and the “Red Scare” are both events in U.S. history that were widely feared by the people. Both the Crucible and the red scare were based off accusations that were taken out of proportion instead of being dismissed like they should have been. Though the Red Scare and the Salem Witch Trials were both times of hysteria, they impacted different amounts of people. The Red Scare was a problem that impacted the entire country, while the Salem with Trials for the most part only impacted the people of Salem, Massachusetts. Another difference between the Red Scare and the Salem with Trials is the reason in which these events occurred. The Red Scare was a cause of many people fearing the rise of communism while the Salem Witch Trials did
The Crucible was written to show people living during the Cold War how ridiculous their thoughts, actions and beliefs were. The sense of panic inspired by the accusations of one girl were very similar to that of the time when Senator McCarthy began claiming that he had evidence that certain people were Communists. For both Abigail Williams and the senator, the “evidence” each accrued was unable to be neither proven nor disproven by authorities due to the nature of the accusations, but was considered truthful as so many people supported it. The support mainly came from those who hoped to gain from the downfall of others, or as to not be accused themselves. This is furthe...
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as a protest paper to the brutality of the Red Scare .The Red Scare was the inoperable fear of Communism within the United States. This scare was caused as a result of the Cold War in the 1950’s. During the Cold War the US was scared of an attack of the Soviets, and the Soviets were equally as scared of an attack upon them by us. Joseph McCarthy, a Senator from Wisconsin, saw this fear as an opportunity to rise to power. McCarthy had many supporters that were primarily Republicans, Catholics, Conservative Protestants, and Blue-collar workers. McCarthy ruthlessly utilized scare tactics to get people to believe and follow him blindly into his accusations as to innocent citizens supporting Communism and either having them jailed or killed by providing phony evidence. Arthur Miller was not intimidated by this he wrote the Crucible as “an act of desperation” (Miller). This desperation was to counteract the lack of speaking out about personal beliefs during the Red Scare for the fear of breaking the law. In The Crucible, Miller wrote about a character named John Proctor who is very similar to Miller himself. Both the author and the character had to overturn the same personal paralyzing guilt, not speaking out soon enough. Nonetheless, their eventual overcoming of this guilt leads them to becoming the most forthright voice against the madness around them.
Arthur Miller, the author of The Crucible, lived during the Red Scare, which was anti-Communist as the Salem witch trials were anti-witches. The whole book is a symbol of two events that happened in history. The Red Scare and McCarthyism both serve as symbols of the Salem witch trials, which makes it an allegory. Although the play is based off of the witch trials during seventeenth century New England, the author meant for it to address his concern for the Red Scare in an indirect way. For example, just like the witch trials accusing people of witchcraft, Americans during the Red Scare accused others of being pro-Communist. The same widespread paranoia occurred as a result.
Death is a major theme through both Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. In the first text, mass hysteria rips through Salem after a group of girls danced in the woods and blame everything and anything on witchcraft. The girl who could be identified as the main trouble-maker is Abigail Williams. She kicked up all of the witch suspicions because she had an affair with John Proctor, the identifiable hero. The story climaxed with the death of characters that drew affection from the readers. In the second piece of literature, the main conflict happens to be that of Hester Prynne, who committed adultery and had a child. There was a lot of public ridicule in this instance and many underlying plots within it. Again, the climax of the story could be argued to be the death of a beloved character. These two particular titles do in fact share a lot of common ideas and themes, while at the same having very
As once stated by Joseph R. McCarthy “I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department” (Joseph). The red scare occurred in the 1950’s when United States senator Joseph McCarthy lied when accusing people for being communists. McCarthyism is the practice of making false accusation for the purpose of ruining the lives of innocent people. In the play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, which takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 when the townspeople were accusing and being accused of witchcraft. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as a reference to the red scare because in 1692 and 1950’s, both societies were being watched closely, were restricted of certain opportunities, and in both there were false accusations. In The Crucible, Salem’s downfall was caused by theocracy because the church plays an enormous role in
The Red Scare happened during the Cold War when the US and Russia were threatening each other by trying to build more power than the other. At the time, Americans were very fearful of communists, so when one man named Joseph McCarthy, a Senator from Wisconsin, starting telling people that there were communists living among them, many people believed him (Westlund). The composition of The Crucible is about the Salem Witch Trials, but there are clear parallels that can be connected to the McCarthy Hearings. The people in Salem were afraid of witchcraft and many people believed accusations because they were afraid. The comparison was very controversial and ended up getting Arthur Miller accused of communist affiliation. The Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Hearings are compared in The Crucible and there are clear parallels seen in the story
One example of The Crucible being an allegory to the McCarthy Era is the similarity in the way people were accused. In both instances “Habeas corpus” and “Innocent until proven guilty” are not present. In The Crucible the accused entered the courtroom with a decided fate. To Judge Danforth they were guilty unless they could prove themselves innocent or confess and give him the names of other witches. Even though this was unfair, people were afraid that if they stood up to it than they too would be accused. In John Proctors case this was true. John Proctor goes to the courthouse to free his wife who has been accused of witchcraft. Slowly, Danforth and Hawthorn turn it against him and accuse him of witchcraft. All hell breaks loose in the courtroom and Proctor has an outburst.
The Crucible is paralleled directly to the Salem Witch Trials and indirectly to the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s. The story of The Crucible takes place against the background of the Salem Witch, trials but the themes lie much deeper. The main themes expressed in The Crucible relate to the events that occurred at both the Salem Witch Trials and during the McCarthy era. At the Salem Witch Trials, one hundred fifty people were accused of practicing witchcraft and nineteen of those were convicted and executed. The evidence against these people was hardly substantial. At the McCarthy hearings, thousands of people were “blacklisted.” Anyone who tried to oppose the accusations was also viewed as a Communist. No one was convicted due to the more advanced legal system; still, that did not erase the fear that was instilled by the allegations.
The lack of evidence was why so many innocent people were convicted when it was obvious no harm was done. Everyone who were “accused in The Crucible and those accused during the McCarthy hearings were found guilty with such little evidence” (Comparing the Crucible and the McCarthy Hearings). In “The Crucible” many false accusations can be seen throughout the play, but the major ones are at the beginning of play with numerous characters being accused including Sarah Good and Goody Osburn. The accusers are no other than the little girls who are accusing others for their own personal gain. The girls’ “unsubstantiated claims about the existence of witches in Salem” not only led to their own downfall but it also “[ruined] lives and lead to increased hostility in Salem” (Similarities between McCarthyism and The Crucible). The same lack of evidence plays out in McCarthyism. Joseph McCarthy came in during the 1950s when “it [was] obvious that America’s position in world affairs [was] seriously weakened” because it allowed him to gain people through peoples’ fears (Pg. 7 McCarthyism - The Fight for America). Since there were rumors of communists of America it “sparked a hunt that many backed because they were scared” and so even with the lack of evidence “everyone was willing to support it” just out of fear (Comparing the Crucible). McCarthy’s use of fear on the people also led to unsubstantiated
The play “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller was written in response to McCarthyism in the 1950’s. In 1692 and 1693 the Salem witch trials took place in Salem Massachusetts. Girls believed to be involved in witchcraft were responsible for these trials. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s senator McCarthy came to office. Senator McCarthy and some of his allies were responsible for hysteria in the United States of America in the 1950’s. The scare was also in result of a communist scare after World War II and leading to the cold war. The behavior of the people of the Salem witch trials and Americans in the 19050’s resulted in a big scare in reaction to hysteria.
An allegory is defined as a complete story, which involves characters, and events that stand for an abstract idea or an event.
In both situations, fear and absolutism were influential in these accusations. “The Red hunt . . . was becoming the dominating fixation of the American psyche. . . . [S]tudios . . . agreed to submit artists’ names to the House Committee for ‘clearing’ before employing them. This unleashed a veritable holy terror among actors, directors, and others, from Party members to those who had had the merest brush with a front organization” (Miller, “Why I Wrote The Crucible”). Chiefly due to fear of punishment, innocent names were revealed, which not only fueled the belief that communists were penetrating society, but it also perpetuated the apprehensive searches for these wanted people, even stretching to the casting for movies. As a result, these accusations labeled many people as traitors to the United States, and with this label, careers and reputations were ruined. Likewise, The Crucible’s witch trials were perpetuated by false accusations, and the theory of absolutism was also prevalent. As Giles Corey stated in the court to save the life of an individual, “I cannot give you his name. . . . He’ll lay in jail if I give his name” (Miller, The Crucible 96-7). For his silence, Giles Corey was held in contempt of court and ultimately was pressed to death for staying mute. Like Giles Corey, those who showed resistance against the trials were interpreted to be an immoral threat to authority. Just as individuals who had “the merest brush” with communists during the Second Red Scare, those who denied their involvement in witchcraft or refused to reveal names were jailed or executed. Some people took advantage of these accusations by mentioning a person’s name in order to seek personal vengeance upon them or to gain their property once they have been jailed. In both The Crucible and the Second Red
An allegory is a story that has hidden meaning buried in it, usually a moral, political, or religious meaning. The book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, and the short story “The Myth of the Cave” by Plato, are both considered to be allegories. In fact, they are very similar allegories because their hidden meanings are alike. In “The Myth of the Cave,” the people are sitting in a deep, dark cave with nothing to live for. Similarly, in “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” the flock is wrapped up in the idea that all they have to do in life is find food and eat it. Also, the main characters in both stories had a mentor that showed them that there is indeed, more to life than what they have been doing. In both stories, there was a higher
Allegory is a literary device used to express meaningful convictions, concepts and prescripts in a composition. This ideas can be transmitted through characters , event which occurs on the story, or even a figure . The purpose of this function is to teach humans the importance of a lesson. The meaning of this word can be also explained as a method to express a meaning of a guidance through a tangible elements of a story. Furthermore it can also be described as a extended metaphor. For instance, in the book “ Lord of the Flies” Piggy is the very representation of civilness and another character which contributes to the allegory established in the book is Jack who is the portrayal of evilness within humans. In most book one can be able to find