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The Crucible" Literary Analysis Essay
The Crucible" Literary Analysis Essay
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In Arthur Miller’s “Why I Wrote The Crucible,” he parallels the Salem Witch Trials and the Second Red Scare to criticize the prosecution of suspected Communists in the latter. During the Red Scare conservative politicians, most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy, claimed that Communists had infiltrated the United States government. They used the resulting hysteria as well as hearsay accusations to mar their opponents’ reputations. Likewise, in Miller’s The Crucible, spectral evidence – which is a claim from the witness that the offender’s spirit has harmed them – is used to convict potential witches during their trials. Throughout these two works, Miller effectively links the witch trials to the hearings of accused Communists during the Red Scare and defends his modification of history except about the creation of Abigail Williams and John Proctor’s affair. …show more content…
This is exemplified by Judge Danforth in The Crucible: “… who may be a witness of [witchcraft]? The witch and the victim. … Now we cannot hope the witch will accuse herself; granted? Therefore, we must rely upon her victims–and they do testify, the children certainly do testify. … I think I have made my point?” (100). This correlates with the trials of alleged Communists, whose confessions of innocence were ignored and who were condemned regardless of their testimony. Moreover, in both time periods, the accused could avoid punishment by revealing the names of other Communists or witches. This resulted in many of the accused revealing the names of innocent people to avoid their own
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
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.
During the 1690’s in Salem, Massachusetts, one of the most disgraceful events in American history took place. 20 innocent people were sentenced to death on charges of witchcraft (Kortuem). At the time there was a witch scare sweeping across the North East of America in a time we know today as the Salem Witch Trials. The witch trials was one of the most shameful events in American history. In fact, it was compared to another event by a man named Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller was a playwright from New York who wrote many famous plays like Death of a Salesman, All my Sons, and of course The Crucible (Kortuem). In The Crucible, Miller was comparing the McCarthy Hearings at the time to the events hundreds of years earlier in the
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 development of McCarthyism in the 1950s due to the increased fears of communism led to the imprudent accusations of disloyalty and treason to the United States. The Salem witch trials during 1692 were hearings and false accusations based on the views of McCarthyism. Arthur Miller’s knowledge of these events in history greatly influenced his writing of the Crucible. He included the imprudent accusations that were being greatly used by Joseph McCarthy and gave these traits to a group of girls in Salem. These girls created something in their town that was extremely similar to the Second Red Scare, a result of increased communist accusations, that lead to several deaths of innocent men and women.
The court did not take evidence into consideration if it negatively affected someone’s reputation. John Proctor found himself in this situation when he presented a petition to prove the innocence of several women in Salem. Despite the ninety-one signatures, Judge Danforth and Reverend Parris denied the petition because it undermined the court’s authority (86). A signed petition would typically serve as a sound piece of evidence, but because Danforth and Parris were concerned about maintaining the court’s reliability as well as their own, they chose to overlook the document. Because influential characters could not support their decisions with plausible information, they relied on unsound reasoning to prove their points. In act three, Abigail and the other girls began chanting simultaneously to accuse Mary Warren of witchcraft. Witnesses that wanted the court to succeed immediately saw this as proof of Mary’s involvement with the devil, while others quickly pointed out that the girls could have easily fabricated their behavior (106). Powerful members of the community accepted this evidence rather than scrutinizing its validity because it protected their authority. Incidents like these revealed how prioritized reputations led to the negligence of logical
Its easier to know which characters verge upon fright, and who was scared of the life and wanted to seek help on getting out. The Crucible is all about the desperation, hysteria. and fear of Salem’s people. The theme of the Crucible was more so fear.The Crucible takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Everything to me seem to begins at Reverend Parris house where he finds out his daughter Betty is sick. the doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong with betty, but what Reverend Parris didn't mention that he found his daughter dancing in the wood. which is forbidden and known as witch craft!
Of the many similarities between the Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare, one of the most obvious examples of these similarities is that people were accused of doing something they did not do. Not only were they people falsely accused, there was no physical evidence that they ever did anything wrong. The only “evidence” against them was what other people claimed they saw them doing (Miller). Florida International University’s Richard A. Schwartz wrote an essay regarding the Red Scare, and in it he says that during the HUAC hearings, companies, “...listed 151 men and women who the editors claimed were linked with a variety of past or present Communist causes.” This further supports the idea that “spectral evidence” played an important role in both the Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare. There was no proof that anybody was involved with any Communist-sympathizing activities, but since the editors of these popular magazines claimed that they were involved, they had to face the consequences. In the Salem Witch Trials, spectral evidence was a key part from the start of the trials. Despite answering “No,” to all of the questions coming from the judges, ...
Arthur Miller, a playwright living in the 1950s, wrote the infamous play regarding the Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible. There has been much dispute as to why he wrote it, but much of it was covered in his essay, “Why I Wrote “The Crucible’”. Although he described the reason behind writing The Crucible, he stated that the message of his play is up to the individual to infer. However, the main reason that Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible was to show to those governed by terror due to a similar event in the Red Scare of the 1950s the past effects of fear, hysteria, and mob mentality to. From here, the question arises: What message and meaning does The Crucible have for society today? Does it still hold the same relevance? Miller’s play holds
Few people are willing to stand up to the overwhelming power of authority, especially during a time like the Red scare. Hardly any authors are able to recognize meaningful similarities between the present times and an event that happened many years ago—and write about it effectively. Only one has had the courage and intelligence to do both. Arthur Miller was an American author who wrote plays, essays, and stories and has published works dating from to 1936 through 2004. The Crucible, one of his most famous plays, premiered in New York on January 22, 1953 (InfoTrac). It is a historical-fiction story set in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The witch hunt described in this play is similar to the Red Scare, an anti-communist movement led by Senator Joseph McCarthy that lasted from the late 1940s to the late 1950s (Broudin). During both time periods, most people respected high authority while a few dissenters challenged conformist views. The public was censored in what they could say because of the fear of being accused of witchcraft or communism. The hysteria of the times triggered a mob-mentality to emerge among the citizens, which influenced nearly everyone to join the terrible movements. Miller presents all of these ideas in The Crucible using his own experiences as influences. He incorporated many of his own traits into the characters’ dispositions. He also described many situations in the play that were similar to the ones he was in, including how he was censored by the Red Scare. Many people will often conform while only a few will challenge authority, will use censorship to prevent others from expressing their views, and are easily affected by hysteria; these characteristics influenced Miller’s life and are reflected by him in Th...
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 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.
Arthur Miller saw striking resemblances between Joseph McCarthy’s attack on Communism and witch accusations during the 17th century, especially the infamous Salem Witch Trials. He noticed that many aspects of what Joseph McCarthy was doing were eerily similar to that of the people who accused witches during the Salem witch trials. The three main similarities that Arthur Miller saw between the McCarthy era and the Salem witch trials were the judges, widespread paranoia, and influential leaders.
Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, describes the hysteria that took place during the witch trials. The Crucible shows us how manipulation can easily cause human minds to support and condone a terrible tragedy like that of the witch trials. The Red Scare, meaning the fear of communism, took hold in America during the Cold War and caused a very similar kind of hysteria, thus, making events like these seemingly repeatable and not as rare as hoped. Moreover, this frenzy described in the play is one expected to repeat itself throughout American history.