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Discuss the characterization of the crucible by arthur miller
Mccarthyism cause and effect
Discuss the characterization of the crucible by arthur miller
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McCarthyism was a big story in the 1950s and so was The Crucible in the 1952. The Crucible reflects some of the thing that were happening during the “red scare.” In this time period both stories reflect selfishness and power. McCarthy wanted to gain power or get a higher level, and in The Crucible the accusers were accusing those that had more land than they did. McCarthy got the nation scared of communism and in The Crucible the accuser were making everyone scared of witchcraft.
In the 1950s, the “red scare” was happening. This is when people thought that America was going to probably become a Communist. So Senator McCarthy decided to do something about it. He started to accuse everyone who read or did something unusual, so that they would be put on the “Blacklist,” a list of those who had somewhat with Communism. A lot of innocent people were accused, including actors and producers. In February 1950n Senator McCarthy believed there were about 200 communist in the Department of state. (McCarthy, 1954)
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A producer from CBS news Edward R.
Murrow has decided to take on McCarthy along with his team. Murrow wanted to show McCarthy that not everyone he was accusing was part Communism. Murrow took on this challenging job to show people who McCarthy really was. He knew this might take his job away, but he was willing to do it. Other news articles read “The Times Herald of Washington: Senator McCarthy's behavior towards Zwicker not justified…” They knew that McCarthy was starting that were innocent. The Milwaukee Journal said: “The line must be drawn and defended or McCarthy will become the government…” People were starting to realize that McCarthy was wrong in naming all this people as part of
communist. “ [If an] arrogant or witless man in a position of power appears before our Committee and is found aiding the Communist Party, he will be exposed.” said McCarthy, he was trying to expose everyone that was part of the communist party. He started to put people on the list if he saw any signs of them trying to be part of the communist party. The Crucible was a book written by Arthur Miller that tell us the story of the Salem Witch Trials. Arthur miller tells us the story of the Witch trials. In this he gives us an insight of what their values were, their court, and their social life. Abigail Williams one of the main character out of fear starts to choose innocent people. She makes people believe that innocent people were part of witchcraft. Some of those that were accused, choose to say that they were dealing with the devil because they didn’t want to hang from it. Some like Rebecca Nurse that decided to stand to her grounds, and stay true to herself and not letting other tell her what she was. 19 people were hang, 4 people died in jail, 28 were convicted, and 150 people were arrested for witchcraft. Many accusations were made on those who lived far from the city. The people that lived far had more land, so I believe this why they must've chosen them. The ones that lived outside the city were not very social, they were like “outsiders” The ones that lived closer to each other knew each other more than those who lived on the outside. The setting of this book was during the puritans. The puritans lived a very godly life, they went to church, etc. They lived a God centered life. When the witchcraft was brought up they had
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.
...y Wheeling speech created nationwide hysteria, and with its impeccable timing just days after the conviction of the State Official Alga Hiss for lying under oath about his association with the communist Soviet as a spy, fueled the fight on communism. (citation) McCarthy war on communism during the “Second Red Scare” did not leave any individual safe from accusations. He attacked government agents, entertainment industry workers, educators, union members, and alienated the left-wing Democrats. McCarthy helped to create the atmosphere of suspicion and panic with his growth in media coverage. McCarthy’s words made for big headlines and the media was quick to cover his stories. This exposure helped facilitate American approval of McCarthy and empowered him to make more accusations on those suspected of subversion. In 1953, McCarthy headed the Government Operations Commit
Although the Red Scare made McCarthy who he was he did not make it any better. Document 6 shows us a cartoon of 2 men driving in a car saying “It’s okay--- we’re hunting communists” This cartoon shows us the fact that people who thought they were doing the right thing ,such as McCarthy, were running their own people over in the process and still thinking that everything they were doing was justified because they were so scared. People running over others just made those people get up and wonder why they weren’t doing as much or why they weren’t as scared as those guys were, so naturally they tried harder. McCarthy was intensified by the Red Scare but his actions only made it worse. He was a state senator. A government official working for the good of our country. Citizens tend to have respect for people of his position and they also tend to listen. Document 4 states “While McCarthy is the worst sort of demagogue, many people listen when he yells, screams and sputters, because they are afraid.” This statement says it all. He may be wrong in his doings but people still look to him out of fear because he is a leader, a respected man, and also an excuse. Document 4 says “In addition to the persecution of many innocent people by this man, the greater danger lies, as you point out, in that those who should be eliminated from public life as being unfit or subversive, can now defend themselves by stating that it is merely
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.
Another comparison between The Crucible and McCarthyism is that in both people were guilty of believe. In The Crucible, people who believed or practice witchcraft were executed and in McCarthyism the ones who believed or participate in Communism were guilty of belief.
Herbert Block, a cartoon illustrator during McCarthyism, depicts the absurdity of the communist accusations during the 1950s through his drawings of fictitious evidence and the power hungry government. Despite the lack of evidence, the influence of the government’s spurious claims causes unnecessary hysteria and chaos within America. Likewise, these events are prevalent within Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. The witch trials symbolize the court hearings during McCarthyism, and an identical absence of feasible evidence and a town overridden by fear lead to fallacious convictions. Block’s political cartoons embody the fraudulent evidence and hysteria over communism during McCarthy’s reign, which relates to the witch trials that Miller describes
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.
Arthur Miller wants to change the way people act toward the McCarthy trials, so he writes The Crucible. It simulates the McCarthy trials through dramatic situations and dynamic and static characters. There are connections that can be made between the communist hunt and The Crucible’s witch hunt. They represent the way Miller sees the society during the trials. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he presents Senator McCarthy as the court, the hysteria of the people being claimed a communist as the hysteria of the town being claimed a witch, and the high possibility of being targeted as a communist as the high possibility of being targeted as a witch.
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
From 1949 to 1954, the citizens of the United States were overcome with terror of the possibility of being accused of Communism. Joseph McCarthy was an anti-communist zealot obsessed with rooting out perceived Communist spies and activities in the United States. Common opinion showed that McCarthy was a bully and a liar. The Senate condemned him for it because at the time, there was no evidence to support him. However, in recent years, evidence has come out that confirms the basis of what McCarthy said. There were Communists infiltrating America, and it seemed McCarthy was the only one who actively trying to find it. McCarthy governed the U.S. people with fear for three year, was censored, and now is being proven correct, despite people trying to hide the truth.
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.
McCarthy was elected senate after becoming a lawyer in his sate of Wisconsin. During the first few years of his term nothing major really happened until 1950. In a speech to the Women’s club of wheeling in West Virginia he stated that he had a list in his hand of about 205 known members of the communist party working for the United States department. President Harry Truman had signed an executive order that said that all communists or fascists could not obtain a United States government job. The FBI played a big role in the investigation of this list McCarthy contained. McCarthy’s friend j. Edgar Hoover, which was a violent ant-communist in the federal government, could not wait to expose the people McCarthy accused of being communists. McCarthy’s list created a nationwide scar among the people of the United States. Everything McCarthy said was a lie and he had no evidence to show that the people he accused were really communist but, because of the start of the Korean War and the arrest of two American soldiers accused of spying on the Soviet Union American citizen...
...it was. Fear makes people do things they normally would not. Because of fear people overlook things they normally would notice imediately, especially in the case of something being moral or immoral. McCarthy was described as "paranoid" and for whom "...life was a sereis of conspiracies, the most fiendish of which were directed at him..."(Cook p77). Fear was the greatest underlying cause of the McCarthy movement; fear of communism, fear of the loss of freedom, fear of being accused or fear of what would happen if someone challenged the movement.