Examples Of Arthur Miller's Motivation For The Crucible

Arthur Miller’s motivation for writing the The Crucible was that he became interested in the witch trials because he found himself in it. In Miller's essay, “Why I Wrote The Crucible: An author's’ answer to politics”, he explains how he had become fascinated with the environment of paranoia and how it affected society as a whole. “When I came across the story of the Salem witch trials, I finally came up with a way to express those themes on stage.” In his essay he states “I was also drawn into writing The Crucible by chance it gave me to use new language”. To me I thought that The crucible is an allegory for McCarthyism as he connects McCarthyism to The Crucible. At the beginning of the essay, he said explained that the U.S Department’s fear

of China after the communist takeover to the fear in The Crucible. Miller stated, “There was magic all around; the politics of alien conspiracy soon dominated political discourse and bid fair to wipe out any other issue.(2)” Miller noticed these thought processes as results to supernatural beliefs of his characters. As communist built, Miller grew more convinced that he wanted to create and write a play based on this. He was intriginly interested in people who disagreed with the witch hunt/ communist. He also says, “But by 1950, when I began to think of writing about the hunt for Reds in America, I was motivated in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many liberals who, despite their discomfort with the inquisitors' violations of civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, of being identified as covert Communists if they should protest too strongly.” Miller’s motivation for writing this play about the Salem Witch Trials developed his social commentary about McCarthyism.