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The communism in eastern Europe collapsed
Similarities between mccarthyism and crucible
Social aspects of the Salem witch trials
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Recommended: The communism in eastern Europe collapsed
McCarthyism and The Crucible relates in similar ways when in the atmosphere when Miller wrote this play. In McCarthyism it talks about Americans fearing the encroachment of Communism, how the Eastern Europe had become a conglomerate of Communist satellite nations and a throw in China and Americans began to feel this unsettling feeling that they were surrounded by a Communist threat and this is when paranoia emerged. Not only was paranoia in McCarthyism, it was also in The Crucible. Mille wrote similar things that related to this. McCarthyism felt fear and paranoia, just like in The Crucible. In The Crucible it talks about Salem being a religious community in the middle part of evil. Salemites considered the forest to main area of the devil,
and Salem was surrounded by forest, this led to Paranoia to develop. Not only do these relate to one another, but they had other similarities. The Crucible felt fear and paranoia just like in McCarthyism. McCarthy’s unsubstantiated claims ruined lives and led to increased hostility and in The Crucible the girls unsubstantiated claims ruined many lives and lead to an increase of hostility in Salem. Overall, McCarthyism and The Crucible both felt paranoia and fear at the time. It was not easy for everyone back then. People's lives were ruined and people would blame whoever.
In conclusion Arthur Miller saw the similarities in The McCarthy Era and The Salem Witch Trials, and portrayed them in “The Crucible.” The lives of many people were destroyed during these times in history.
In 1860-1960 there was lynching in the United States. When the confederates (south) lost the civil war the slaves got freedom and got rights of human beings. This was just to say because segregation wasn 't over in the South and didn 't go away for over 100 years. Any black person in the South accused but not convicted of any crime of looking at a white woman, whistling at a white woman, touching a white woman, talking back to a white person, refusing to step into the gutter when a white person passed on the sidewalk, or in some way upsetting the local people was liable to be dragged from their house or jail cell by lots of people crowds, mutilated in a terrible
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.
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.
What is McCarthyism? It is the public onslaught of an individual or an individual’s character by means of baseless and uncorroborated charges, basically the repudiation of a person’s reputation. Joe McCarthy was the Wisconsin senator that evoked this era of fear and paranoia by inflaming the current fear of world domination by the Communist party that enveloped the Nation. He did this by announcing that he had discovered “57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.” (McCarthy, 1950, p. 2), later the amount of implicated individuals rose to 205. These accusations launched McCarthy into the national spotlight where he then began his smear campaign against many well-known Americans, which was commonly referred to as “witch-hunts”. Because of McCarthy’s actions, up to 12, people lots their jobs hundreds were incarcerated. He then turned his sights to book banning because he claimed there were 30,000 books written by all shades of Communists. After his lists were made public all were removed from the Overseas Library Program. But he was not finished yet, he then assailed members of the entertainment business. He had writers and actors brought to trial. Many of these people were blacklisted and worse, all without a single shred of evidence. When people spoke out against McCarthy they were thrown onto the communist train, until enough people came forward to rebuke McCarthy’s unprecedented tactics. At this point he fell from political power into dishonor on December 2, 1954. This ended the McCarthy era, but not the atmosphere of paranoia that lingers in the nation today.
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
A very famous man once said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933). This is certainly true when it comes to Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible. Arthur Miller lived through the Red Scare, also known as McCarthyism. After living through this era and being one of the accused communists Miller wrote the book titled The Crucible in 1952. This book told the story of the Salem witch trials with some modifications to make it more relevant to the current situation. The book ultimately became an allegory devoted solely to McCarthyism. In The Crucible it uses situations such as the actual trials; direct comparisons of the characters in the book to those that participated in the McCarthy trials and, the atmosphere of the two events were almost identical.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller The Crucible is a fictional retelling of events in American history surrounding the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century, yet is as much a product of the time in which Arthur Miller wrote it, the early 1950s, as it is description of Puritan society. At that particular time in the 1950s, when Arthur Miller wrote the play the American Senator McCarthy who chaired the ‘House Un-American Activities Committee’ was very conscious of communism and feared its influence in America. It stopped authors’ writings being published in fear of them being socialist sympathisers. Miller was fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials and that human beings were capable of such madness. In the 1950s the audience would have seen the play as a parallel between the McCarthy trials and the Salem Trials.
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.
There is a strong connection between McCarthyism and the Salem With Trials, which are what The Crucible is based on. Arthur Miller immediately recognized this link, and displayed a great example of an abuse of power, and people going to great measures to get what they want (Brater). The desire for power, unsubstantiated accusations, and the detrimental effects of these accusations are the ways in which The Crucible is connected to McCarthyism. Power and selfishness can destroy the lives of those that possess it, and the lives of people around them. Humans are easily influenced by what others do and say, which is why people can gain power so easily. It is the choice of the powerful to use their power in the correct way. When power is misused, paranoia and chaos, as well as many other negative effects result.
The play “The Crucible” is an allegory for the McCarthyism hysteria that occurred in the late 1940’s to the late 1950’s. Arthur Miller’s play “the crucible” and the McCarthyism era demonstrates how fear can begin conflict. The term McCarthyism has come to mean “the practice of making accusations of disloyalty”, which is the basis of the Salem witch trials presented in Arthur Miller’s play. The fear that the trials generate leads to the internal and external conflicts that some of the characters are faced with, in the play. The town’s people fear the consequences of admitting their displeasure of the trials and the character of John Proctor faces the same external conflict, but also his own internal conflict. The trials begin due to Abigail and her friends fearing the consequences of their defiance of Salem’s puritan society.
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.
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a play that was first performed in 1953 in the United States of America in the midst of the persecution of alleged communists during the era of McCarthyism. Although the play explicitly addresses the Salem which hunt, many find that the play is an analogy to McCarthyism due to the striking similarities in which the people behaved. Miller highlight the different groups of characters in order to reveal overlying ideas of the play such as: Self preservation, power, and hypocrisy.
Authors often times have different reasons for giving their stories certain themes or settings. Arthur Miller is an American playwright who wrote The Crucible in 1952, during a time in which the United States was becoming significantly worried about the power of the Soviet Union. Worries that communism would infiltrate the United States led to a large amount of panic and paranoia in the American government. It is easy to see why Miller could comment on this situation in society by comparing it to the witch trials that happened in Salem two and a half centuries ago. Interestingly, Miller himself became a large target of one of these anti-communist investigations run by McCarthy. The Crucible, is a work of art inspired by actual events as response to moral and political issues.