The Crucible Research Paper

Nineteen forty-seven. The House Un-American Activities Committee has instituted a “Hollywood blacklist,” condemning many of those in the business of motion picture as Red, or communist, making it impossible for them to land jobs or roles. Rewind two-hundred fifty-five years to the Salem witch trials, a similar series of events motivated by religion instead of politics. In The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts, Arthur Miller uses the group of young girls led by Abigail Williams to draw a comparison between those trials and the convictions of the Second Red Scare, and to evince how a single person can ruin a society through the effects of mass hysteria.

Throughout the play, Abigail Williams lies and tricks the town, all the while accusing more and

more people of witchcraft. Abigail’s goal is simple: to dispose of Elizabeth Proctor so she can be with her husband, no matter who she must flatten to do so. Abigail’s method for getting her own way was simple: first, she casts an allegation of witchcraft onto an opponent, and then once they confess, Abigail is free from suspicion and she has taken care of another adversary. Moss describes this process by writing, “ . . . In this way, knaves gain control of fools, brush aside the sane counsels of those who try to exert a calming influence, and initiate Salem’s passion.” The calming force in this instance most likely being a character such as Reverend Hale or John Proctor. Abigail, in the script, serves as the instigator of the events beginning in the first act, using the children that danced with her as banderillas; she forces them into striking terror in the hearts of the other villagers and safeguarding Williams lest one of the girls decide to accuse her, which Mary Warren does and is subsequently accused of sending an eidelon to assail Abigail (Miller, The Crucible 114).
Starting in the late nineteen forties and going into the fifties, the Second Red scare plagued the United States with the fear of both communism and the fear of being thought of as one, much like the people of Salem in 1692 feared of being accused of witchcraft.

Disastrous is the thought that possesses a society (Blaney). This applies both to the Second Red Hunt and the trials in The Crucible, the thought being communists in the government and witches living among the Puritan settlers respectively. Quite bluntly, The Crucible was written purely as allegory of the time of McCarthyism in the twentieth century (Miller, “Why I Wrote The Crucible”). During the trials, the courts of the region adopted a new acceptable form of evidence, spectres. This meant that one could just claim that they were attacked by a spirit sent out by someone, and that could be taken as definitive proof that the accused was a witch (Miller, “Why I Wrote The Crucible). These instances are similar to the times of the Second Red Scare, where mere suspicion of being remotely Red or even “too-far-left” was enough to earn the name “pinko”, thus decimating any reputation one could have had. In the final lines of the play, John Proctor calls out the validity of the trials and refuses to sign a confession to witchcraft, nailing the last nails on his coffin (Miller, The Crucible 143). Proctor’s actions in his final moments go against the trend of that time and of the Red Hunt because speaking out against either the trials or the hearings meant being accused as a sympathizer; a quiet devil is better than a dead angel, even if only because the devil remains alive

(The).
A reader versed in the aspects of McCarthyism in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties may notice a similarity between former United States Senator Joseph McCarthy and The Crucible character Abigail Williams.
Abigail accused people of witchcraft to eliminate her competition for the man of her dreams, John Proctor (Blaney). McCarthy accused people of being Red, possibly to eliminate his own competition in congress. This sentiment was also shared with President Truman, using the fear of communism as a weapon for the republicans to bring down the democrats, similar to Abigail’s use of fear and manipulation a mob to gain the protagonist of The Crucible’s heart (Miller, “Why I Wrote The Crucible”). Behavior like President Truman’s and Abigail Williams’ mirror each other in the way that they put others in a negative light to push their own agendas further.
The witch trials delineated in The Crucible echo the influence of McCarthyism in the Second Red Hunt, in specific respect to inamorata Abigail Williams’ and demagogue Joseph McCarthy’s means to their power. Abigail condemned people to either hang or be exiled while McCarthy created a majorly fearful atmosphere in the United States during the mid-twentieth century by making people fear for their reputation. These characters on the stage of life are from two acts in which mass hysteria takes the minds of the people and wreaks havoc. This type of mindset has already transpired at least twice throughout the history of the continent of North America. Another time like the trials and the red scares may transpire again. If this type of terror is bound to repeat itself, society must ask itself if that day is already here, with Islamophobism on the rise in Europe and the United States, and if not, whether or not the human race will be ready to endure those days when they arrive.