More handpicked essays just for you.
The Crucible as an Allegory for McCarthyism
Arthur Miller's life and McCarthyism are reflected in The Crucible
Arthur Miller's life and McCarthyism are reflected in The Crucible
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
As the fear of communism spread during the early 1950s, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy investigated several allegations of communist activity within the elite community. The increasing number of accusations sparked a time of mass hysteria that became known as the Red Scare. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1952 when the Red Scare was at its peak; in the play, he recounted a similar panic known as the Salem Witch Trials. Miller conveyed the irrationality of the Red Scare through the plot and characters of The Crucible, drawing a connection between the role of social position in McCarthyism and the Salem Witch Trials. Throughout The Crucible, Arthur Miller emphasized how maintaining one’s reputation could conflict with ideas of reality through …show more content…
The court did not take evidence into consideration if it negatively affected someone’s reputation. John Proctor found himself in this situation when he presented a petition to prove the innocence of several women in Salem. Despite the ninety-one signatures, Judge Danforth and Reverend Parris denied the petition because it undermined the court’s authority (86). A signed petition would typically serve as a sound piece of evidence, but because Danforth and Parris were concerned about maintaining the court’s reliability as well as their own, they chose to overlook the document. Because influential characters could not support their decisions with plausible information, they relied on unsound reasoning to prove their points. In act three, Abigail and the other girls began chanting simultaneously to accuse Mary Warren of witchcraft. Witnesses that wanted the court to succeed immediately saw this as proof of Mary’s involvement with the devil, while others quickly pointed out that the girls could have easily fabricated their behavior (106). Powerful members of the community accepted this evidence rather than scrutinizing its validity because it protected their authority. Incidents like these revealed how prioritized reputations led to the negligence of logical
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.
Many people look back on the events of the Salem witch trials and laugh at the absurdity of the allegations. It seems crazy that society could be fooled into believing in things like witches and deal with the events in such an extreme manner. It is a common belief that witch hunts are things of the past. Many people would agree that they no longer exist today; however Arthur Miller, author of the play, "The Crucible", points out that society has not come very far from the days of the Salem witch trials. In his play, he used the Salem witch trials to represent the McCarthy Era because he saw that the nation was facing the same events that Salem went through back in the late 1600's. Arthur Miller wrote "The Crucible" in an attempt to create moral awareness for society. He did so by making a few small changes to the history and creating parallels in the play with racism, human tendencies, and H.U.A.C.
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
Events have played out in history that made people realize the inhumane acts of people and the Salem witch trials and the McCarthy era were two of them. The Salem witch trials in 1692 were almost 260 years before the McCarthy “witch hunts” in the 1950s yet there are similarities between them. The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller in 1953, is about the Salem witch trials and is an allegory to the practicing of McCarthyism during the Second Red Scare in the United States, which Miller was a victim of. Although there may be differences between “The Crucible” and McCarthyism, ultimately the anger, lack of evidence, and the people were alike in both events.
The horrors of history are passed on from generation to generation in hopes that they will never occur again. People look back on these times and are appalled at how horrendous the times were; yet, in the 1950s, history repeated itself. During this time, Joseph McCarthy, a United States senator from Wisconsin, began accusing people of being communists or communist sympathizers, which is parallel to the Salem witch trials in the late 1690s when innocent people were accused of practicing witchcraft. One of the people McCarthy accused was author and playwright Arthur Miller. To express his outrage at McCarthy’s actions, Miller wrote The Crucible, intentionally drawing similarities between the McCarthy hearings and the Salem witch trials.
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.
Miller’s disapproval of McCarthy was blatantly inscribed into the play through the use of the topic of witchcraft. In The Crucible the main topic was the Salem Witch Trials, similar to communism in The Great Fear. Miller chose this topic to show how ridiculous he believed the accusations McCarthy made were. The controversy surrounding witchcraft and communism are similar in that both had numerous opinions from people of all backgrounds. During the Salem Witch Trials belief in Witchcraft mostly collected in New England but still spread into the rest of the colonies and during the McCarthy era ideas about communism were not believed by everyone in fact most didn’t believe them. Miller crafted the play in 1953 for the spectators during the McCarthy era to find these similarities and relate to them. This solidified some onlookers disapproval of McCarthy and changed the minds of others. It was another layer added to the hysteria of the time and led to the investigation of Miller by the HUAC and his eventual blacklisting in 1957. These similarities made the Salem Witch Trials an easy event for Miller to use to depict the McC...
The Red Scare of the 1950”s and The Salem Witch Trials had its similarities. The Red Scare was fueled by a fear of communism, like how The Salem Witch Trials was fueled by the fear of being imprisoned or death for witchcraft. The Crucible is about a group of girls who all start a rumor, following Abigail Williams, to hide what the girls were doing in the woods. The rumors then start spreading and the townspeople think that the girls were touched by the devil and witchcraft is involved. These rumors leads to turning friends, families, and neighbors to turn on each other. In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, fear and suspicion are spreading through the town causing destruction and a mass hysteria.
Arthur Miller uses hysteria in The Crucible to epitomize the detrimental effect on the USA during the Red Scare.Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, demonstrates that the mass of hysteria take place during the Salem witch trials- the mass of hysteria caused people to turn against one another, makes people lose rational thought, makes people more desperate, and makes people lose their morals. The plot of the Salem witch trials contains elements of McCarthyism which is embedded into the Crucible written by Arthur
In the1950s, the world though that they are not as ludicrous as the people of the past, but ultimately they were the same. In the past, people believe that witches were among them, and that practiced black magic and used it on people. Later on, they have drawn away from those silly associations, but are still as naive as they were, but in a different way. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, he uses a comparison from the Salem Witch Trials in the 1500’s to the Red Scare epidemic in the 1950’s. The term, McCarthyism was formed in the 1950’s due to a man, Joe McCarthy, making poorly supported accusations of people being communist. Arthur Miller used this in his play to depict the events taken place. Although what Miller may not have known at the
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in direct response to the communist “witch hunt” of the 1940s and 1950s. Although, the events in Salem, Massachusetts, can also be directly compared to the modern day persecution that occurred during The Holocaust.
Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ is set during the Salem Witch Trials, a time where McCarthyism was an acceptable idea. McCarthyism is a practice where accusations are made on people based on little to no evidence. In 'The Crucible' allegations are made against innocent people, especially women. The women and men are then put on trial for practicing witchcraft. The court system functioned on unfair and unjust trials; their main motive being for the accused to confess. The only way to survive being executed was to confess and give names of others who were involved. Failing to confess eventually lead to one’s death by hanging, pressing, and other horrific inhumane methods. In modern times, we see McCarthyism linked to race. Criminal accusations are placed on African Americans today that date as far back as the 1700s. African Americans were seen as inferior people and more prone to committing crimes. These accusations prompted many unjust arrests and deaths.
The plot of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which focuses on the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s, is an analogy and criticism to the McCarthy investigations that were going on during the 1950s, which is also called the McCarthyism, so it is important to study the McCarthyism as the background of The Crucible in order to comprehend the work better.
The play The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a play set in the late 1600s as an allegory of the hysteria of McCarthyism in 1950s America. The relationship between John Proctor and his wife, Elizabeth Proctor is crucial to understanding the main concerns of the play such as corruption, forgiveness and reputation through features such as key scenes and key dialogue.
Arthur Miller, author of the celebrated play The Crucible, writes this bleak work to challenge McCarthyism, an anti-communist ideology that exploded through 1950s American politics. Both The Crucible and McCarthyism embodied witch hunts that