Why is The Crucible and McCarthyism is significant? It’s significant because The Crucible is taught in school today and Salem witch trials, that is portrayed in The Crucible, is similar to McCarthyism. The Salem witch trial as well as the McCarthyism share a similarities. There are many life lasting lessons we can learn from this event. Also there are many problems from the Salem witch trials, that is still relevant today. The events describe in the article taught in school, is to remind us about the history of Salem witch trials. Also to teach us not to be afraid to stand for what is right. Religion is also being described in these events. Nowadays there are many religions that we have in our society. However we don’t learn about other people’s religion, instead we just focus on one Religion. The event is being taught in school to prevent us from making the mistakes that were made from the past. However if it were to happen again, we will have the knowledge of what’s the right thing to do. There are many things in The Crucible, and the McCarthyism have in common. Such as accusing people without proof. Also ruining the lives of innocent people. The people who were accused were assumed guilty, and put to jail, or executed. They were ordinarily expected to confessed if they were accused. The media or the townspeople in The …show more content…
This is still relevant today because of our politics problems. We don’t know who we could trust. And people are still afraid to stand up for what they think it’s right, because they’re scared of the government. However the government is telling us lies that they don't want us to know, because they think they’re protecting us. But in reality we need to know the truth, so we could help solve the problem. This is still relevant, because it we could never know if we should believe what the government tells
Joseph McCarthy was a Republican senator who did as much as he could to whip up anti-communism in the 1950s. In the time of his term, he didn’t attach his name to anything significant until February 9, 1950. On that day, he gave a political speech claiming that he had a list of 205 Communists in the State Department. Although nobody saw the list of names and it wasn’t clarified by anybody else, the speech made national news. Furthermore, this relates to The Crucible because Abigail, like McCarthy, made multiple false witch accusations on women in Salem. Arthur Miller’s historical play, The Crucible, portrays the historical events of the Salem witch trials through a number of memorable characters and a background based off of McCarthyism. While
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.
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
One example of The Crucible being an allegory to the McCarthy Era is the similarity in the way people were accused. In both instances “Habeas corpus” and “Innocent until proven guilty” are not present. In The Crucible the accused entered the courtroom with a decided fate. To Judge Danforth they were guilty unless they could prove themselves innocent or confess and give him the names of other witches. Even though this was unfair, people were afraid that if they stood up to it than they too would be accused. In John Proctors case this was true. John Proctor goes to the courthouse to free his wife who has been accused of witchcraft. Slowly, Danforth and Hawthorn turn it against him and accuse him of witchcraft. All hell breaks loose in the courtroom and Proctor has an outburst.
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.
The Crucible is paralleled directly to the Salem Witch Trials and indirectly to the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s. The story of The Crucible takes place against the background of the Salem Witch, trials but the themes lie much deeper. The main themes expressed in The Crucible relate to the events that occurred at both the Salem Witch Trials and during the McCarthy era. At the Salem Witch Trials, one hundred fifty people were accused of practicing witchcraft and nineteen of those were convicted and executed. The evidence against these people was hardly substantial. At the McCarthy hearings, thousands of people were “blacklisted.” Anyone who tried to oppose the accusations was also viewed as a Communist. No one was convicted due to the more advanced legal system; still, that did not erase the fear that was instilled by the allegations.
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 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.
...ations were accused without solid information that could not be proved in any way. These events in history affected people by basically destroying their lives. McCarthyism affected people that were put on those black lists. Once they were put on those black lists it was almost impossible for them to get a job that would help support them and pay for all of their bills that they had. During the Salem witch trial the event destroyed john procter’s family and forced his children to live without a father. Although McCarthyism was mostly bad the good was that the idea of McCarthyism destroyed it self and ended the rise of communism in the United States of America. Due to hysteria in the 1950’s America and the Salem witch trials both resulted in corruption and the destruction of people’s lives. “The Crucible” was written in response to this hysteria in the 1950’s.
The notorious witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts occurred from June through September. It is a brief, but turbulent period in history and the causes of the trials have long been a source of discussion among historians. Many try to explain or rationalize the bizarre happenings of the witch hunts and the causes that contributed to them. To understand the trials and how they came to be, we must first examine the ideals and views of the people surrounding the events. Although religious beliefs were the most influential factor, socioeconomic tensions, and ergot poisoning are also strongly supported theories. A combination of motives seems the most rational explanation of the frenzy that followed the illness of the two girls. This paper looks closely at the some of the possible causes of one of the most notable occurrences in history.
There have been major events that have shaped American history. The Salem Witch Trials and The Red Scare/McCarthyism are two of them. Arthur Miller took these two separate events in US history and realized they were connected in many ways. He wrote The Crucible, as an allegory of McCarthyism. Through his work, Americans could see the hysteria that the Salem Witch trials conveyed and made associations to what was happening in their world with regards to the Red Scare.
Miller wrote the play to compare what was happening in the 1950’s at that time with what had occurred in the Salem witch hunts. Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ was written so that people at the time could relate what had happened in Salem with the McCarthyism happening at that time. The McCarthyism era was when the Un-American Activities Committee was at power and punished civilians who were accused as communists. The events that happened at the two periods of time were similar as people were naming other innocent individuals to try and get out of trouble and this unfortunately led to the phenomenon in both Salem and in 1950s America.
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible because at the time McCarthyism was a big problem. McCarthyism was the practice of making accusations of communism without proper evidence. McCarthyism got its name from its creator, Senator Joseph McCarthy. During the late 1940’s and throughout the 1950’s, McCarthyism was a big deal. People were accusing innocent people of being communist. Arthur Miller noticed that McCarthyism resembled the Salem Witch 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.
The Crucible was based around the Puritan culture and the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts, 1692. There are many representations of themes and issues common to both the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy era, which are shown through various scenes in the play. The Salem Witch Trials were a time of hysteria, accusations and unspoken contradicting beliefs. It was during this time in Salem, that several men and women stood trial for witchcraft and consorting with the devil. In the small town settings, the rumours spread about neighbours were commonly believed to be true which inculcated the hysterical demeanour of Salem. The Puritan name derived from the idea to purify and rid society of any Catholic beliefs. The society was very restricted and valued beliefs of God, so much so they established a theocracy in which the church overruled all civil matters. To a Puritan society, their invisible world of God and angels was as real to them as the one they lived in. Yet for someone to have a belief in Luc...