“I visited Salem for the first time on a dismal spring day in 1952….” (Miller 1095) that’s what started it all. Arthur Miller was motivated to write The Crucible due to the trauma done to the liberals during the McCarthyism trials. The question is, was he a little too motivated to write it? Could his thirst for vengeance for those accused fuel him to over-exaggerate what happened in order to prove a point? Arthur Miller overused his artistic license because Joseph McCarthy was accusing important people of being communists, he wasn’t exactly like Danforth, and some of the accused in the McCarthyism trials were actual communists. To begin with, Joseph McCarthy wasn’t accusing unimportant people of being communists. In fact, “McCarthy claimed that he had a list of 205 people in the State Department that were known to be members of the American Communist Party.” (Spartacus Educational) Arthur Miller himself was put on a blacklist of the House of Un-American Activity Committee for not giving up names. That begs the argument that Miller had a personal vendetta against McCarthy and would ha...
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
Authors used their literary work to get a point across to the public in the story The Crucible; Arthur Miller used events and characters to show the similarities to McCarthyism which was prevalent in the 1950s. McCarthyism was associated with the period in the United Sates also known as the Second Red Scare. McCarthyism is very similar in the way that Joe McCarthy accused Americans of being communist and in The Crucible people were being accused of being witches. It is known that Arthur Miller wrote this story as a reaction to a tragic time in our history.
...e as simply a waste, however if it is done to help rid one’s community of conformity and hysteria, it is a noble act. Through the enormity of this act, others can be effected, and both their consciences and their actions can be affected. In the McCarthyism era, otherwise known as the Red Scare, it was also necessary for people to put themselves on the line in order to limit the scope of the hysteria and help it to settle down. Even if it meant risking their jobs and reputations, the resistance of these people, including Arthur Miller himself, was a necessary step in calming the hysteria. No matter what type of sacrifice you give, whether it be your reputation, your livelihood, your life, or something a little less drastic, putting your community before yourself is a noble action and without people to carry out this philosophy, hysterias would never come to an end.
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
"Reasonable doubt" was all that was necessary to accuse and sometimes convict someone of un-American activities in the late 1940's, early 1950's. This period of time was known for McCarthyism--a time of extreme anticommunism, lead by Senator Joseph McCarthy (McCarthyism). The United States pledged to contain the spread of communism globally, as well as locally, and did what it could to keep this promise. Americans began to fear that communism was leaking into the media, government, arts, schools, and other areas. This was called the "Red Scare" (Brinkley). One writer that used this era as a basis for his play, The Crucible, was Arthur Miller. He was able to capture the panic and mere insanity of many Americans in an allegorical way. The "crusade against subversion" played a significant role in the following: the actions and tactics of McCarthy, the reasons why Miller and other artists were targets of McCarthyism, and the relationship of his play The Crucible to the events of the late 1940's to the early 1950's (Brinkley).
In order to understand The Crucible and McCarthyism, you must know Arthur Miller and Joseph McCarthy . Joseph McCarthy was a Wisconsin Senator in from 1947 until his death in 1957. His job was ordinary until 1950, when McCarthy gave a speech to the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. During the speech McCarthy declared that he had a list of 205 known
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse” (Burke). Lies, power, and selfishness can destroy families, friendships, and towns. When a person has power, they may not use it properly. There have been many instances where this has happened, but two main examples are in the novel The Crucible, and in McCarthyism. The Crucible is connected to McCarthyism by its model of a desire for power, unsubstantiated accusations, and the detrimental effects of these accusations.
Parris: "Aye, a dress. And I thought I saw – someone naked running through the trees.” The play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller had very many themes in it. Some of these themes stood out more then others. These themes would be hysteria, reputation, and hypocrisy. These themes were present throughout the entire play, from the beginning till the end. When you think of a Puritan religion you may think of a very good, morally perfect society. This wasn’t the case in Salem, Massachusetts. It was actually the opposite in the play, there was lying, cheating, stealing and just about everything else you wouldn’t want in your society.
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible because he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities after he was accused of being a communist. This experience prompted Miller to write about the Salem witch trials. Many people in America during the 1950’s were suspected to be communist and were subject to series of investigations. This created fear in, and suspicion in the American society, just like fear and suspicion was raised in Salem during the witch trials. McCarthy’s hunt for communist was nothing compared to the hunt for witches in Salem. In America there were actually communist but there were never any witches in Salem in the 1600’s. Witchcraft is the belief in and practice of magical
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.
During Author Miller’s era of the 1950’s, the ‘cold war’ was happening. Senetor Joeseph McCarthy was completely against communism and began to arrest the communists and people assosiating with them. Those arrested were forced to either name names to identify those who were communists or thought to be, or else they would remain in jail. This was callef McCarthyism For many, being prisioned was a terrible frightening thought so they would name names including any that they could think of that could be innocent. Author Miller was arrested for associating with communists and refused to identify others, and wrote The Crucible, using it as an allegory to identify the problems of society and it’s flaws of the corrupt government.
Was The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, just an “irrational fear?” (Arthur Miller’s The Crucible: Fact & Fiction Par.1). The panic of Communism during the Cold War and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist hearings on February 3, 1953 led to this “irrational fear.” There are several major differences from the true version of the story and Miller’s version. These differences could have made the whole event much more interesting and eerie. Many specific details were overlooked that could have changed the play around. For example, Parris’ wife was not dead. In Miller’s play he refers to the group of girls as Abigail’s girls, but there were many other girls that were included in the group of the “afflicted”. Another difference that could have reconstructed how the play was is Abigail’s age. Because Miller used different context from the event, the true facts of history could have made the play much more interesting.
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.
When Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953, America was in a state of unrest. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee were spreading fear and hysteria with their Communist “witch hunts.” Miller wanted to address the subject in a way that would not blatantly denounce the hearings, and with his previous knowledge of the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692, he created an allegory, and The Crucible was born. By examining the universality of the theme of the play and its tragic elements, it will be apparent that The Crucible is Arthur Miller’s greatest achievement.
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