The Crucible is an allegorical tragedy that depicts of the Salem Witch Hunt in which thousands of innocent people were accused, murdered, and changed forever due to the Salem community’s unrelenting fear of the unknown. Similarly, this occurred two months after the bombing at Pearl Harbor as President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, in which more than 127,000 Japanese-American citizens were forced to relocate from their homes as a result of America’s hysterical fear of this enemy. Fear and prejudice accusations, the victimizing of innocent people, and America’s reliance on the government to render justice and its inability to do so are three vital details of comparison between The Crucible and this historic event.
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• Fear of the unknown
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thought of the Japanese as the uprising enemy after the bombing at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
- As a result, American citizens claimed they were acting as spies for the Japanese during World War II.
- Anti- Japanese paranoia arose as the Americans believed they supported their ancestral land rather than America.
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• Innocent people suffered, died, and lost all they owned
• In The Crucible - Those who did not confess to witchcraft were hung. For example, Rebecca Nurse and John Proctor refused to confess; therefore, they were hung.
- Those who were hung lost all property they owned, and it was given to others in the community. For example, George Jacobs’s land was given to Mr. Proctor after his death.
- If someone questioned the court, they were considered against it. For example, John Proctor questioned the court and was then called “a man of the devil”.
- Thirteen people were sentenced to death and seven were in prison.
• Japanese - 127,000 Japanese- Americans were forced to leave their homes, loved ones, and belongings.
- Americans auctioned the properties and portfolios of those accused, thus they gained wealth and identities to claim as their
In the Crucible there are two quotes Parris says “You will confess yourself or I will take you out and whip you to your death, Tituba!” So what this means is that anybody accused of witch gets hanged. People really do not have a choice. Putnam says “This woman must be hanged! She must be taken and
The racial conflict with Japanese-Americans began when the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a military naval base located in the state of Hawaii. “Behind them they left chaos, 2,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes, and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships” (“Attack” 1). The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on the Empire of Japan. The fear that resulted from the attack on Pearl Harbor caused many white Americans to hate the Japanese-Americans. Many Japanese were accused of being spies and were arrested without proof. “Rabid anti-Japanese American racism surfaced the first days after Pearl Harbor. The FBI and the military had been compiling lists of "potentially dangerous" Japanese Americans since 1932, but most were merely teachers, businessmen or journalists” (Thistlethwaite 1). In February of 1942, all of the Japanese on the West Coast of the United States were sent to internment camps.
Economic interest also encouraged the racism against the Japanese. Tough Japanese work ethics made Japanese businesses competition for Americans. Interest groups and individuals demanded legislators take action against all Japanese. All persons of Japans ancestry, including American citizens of Japanese ancestry, called Nisei, were reported to concentration camps. In reading American Constitutional Interpretation, it states, "General DeWitt explained, it was legitimate to put the Nisei behind barbed wire
...in their family to become sick and possibly die. Many people were accused of witchcraft. More than twenty people died all together. One person was flattened to death because he was accused of witchcraft. When people were accused they had to go to jail, which the conditions were terrible. Then, they had to get a trial from the Court of Oyer and Terminer. After an accused witch had their trial, and went to jail, they would be carted off to Gallows Hill. This was the hill where all the witches were hanged. After a witch was hanged, later that night, their family would usually take the body down and give it a proper burial. The Salem Witchcraft Trials were one of the most terrible times in the history of America. As you can see the chaotic Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were caused by superstition, the strict puritan lifestyle, religious beliefs, and hysteria.
In Arthur Miller 's famous play The Crucible, innocent people are falsely accused of witchcraft and are killed as a result. Even the thought of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600s would put the whole village into mass hysteria. Mass hysteria refers to collective delusions of threats to society that spread rapidly through rumors and fear. This is the main cause of why so many people were arrested and killed for witchcraft. One way people could save themselves was by falsely confessing to have performed witchcraft. Many people did not do this though. This is because the townspeople were held to very strict moral values and must uphold their good name in society. They did not want a bad reputation. In The Crucible, by Arthur
So, since they won't let Mr. Proctor go, they want him to confess to saving his life, here another mini climax occurs because he does not want to sign a big lie. Since Mr. Proctor felt guilty about what he did in his past with Abigail, he decides that now he will save his name with his pride and refuses to sign the confession. So the resolution comes with John Proctor's hanging, but it does not seem like anything was resolved, just that the people who accused the innocent people feel very guilty about what they did. III. Characterization:..
Leaving the West coast was the only way Americans thought the Japanese could show their loyalty to the United States. With all this pressure to show their loyalty to the United States, they allowed themselves to be removed from their homes and forced into concentration camps. If any Japanese-American was to resist the relocation process, the government would force them to leave their home and label them as un-American. If the Japanese go without resisting, they were said to be loyal citizens, but they also lost their rights as citizens in the United States, which was the reason they had migrated to America. (Terry, 2012)
On December 7,1941 Japan raided the airbases across the islands of Pearl Harbour. The “sneak attack” targeted the United States Navy. It left 2400 army personnel dead and over a thousand Americans wounded. U.S. Navy termed it as “one of the great defining moments in history”1 President Roosevelt called it as “A Day of Infamy”. 2 As this attack shook the nation and the Japanese Americans became the immediate ‘focal point’. At that moment approximately 112,000 Persons of Japanese descent resided in coastal areas of Oregon, Washington and also in California and Arizona.3
Inevitably, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, that began World War II, Japanese-Americans were frowned upon and stereotyped because of their descent. However, Japanese immigrants contributed to economic expansion of the United States. Whites resented the Japanese immigrants, but reaped economic profit from the Japanese-American residents’ discipline and hard work. Japanese-Americans of this time seem to be attacked; however, they choose to uphold their disconnection with the rest of the Americans. Many Japanese felt they had superiority over Americans, creating tension and disconnection.
American society, like that of Germany, was tainted with racial bigotry and prejudice. The Japanese were thought of as especially treacherous people for the attack on Pearl Harbor. The treachery was obviously thought to reside in ...
The court system during the Witch Trials was unfair and completely bias. As in the play John Proctor was already judged by the court because of his rare attendance to church “Such a christian that will not come to church but once a month.” -Mr. Parris “Not Come to church?” -Judge Danforth (1319). And many victims were already pronounced guilty before they were present in court due to judge-mentality and former saying brought into the system, just as John and Elizabeth Proctor.
It is no wonder that Americans felt strong prejudice towards the Japanese people during this time. They felt that their country had been invaded in the workplace by taking the white peoples’ jobs and now has been attacked militarily. The media did not help calm this prejudice. The “press and radio slanted the news with a Hearst columnist urging that ‘the Japanese Americans in California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman…and to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over” (Brown). The phrase “A Jap’s a Jap” became popular during this time. The Los Angeles Times quoted, on April 14, 1943, “that ‘A Jap’s a Jap…It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen or not…I don’t want any of them…They are a dangerous element…There is no way to determine their loyalty’” (Brown).
Once the accusations began, many innocent people in the community were taken away. They were then either forced to admit that they were witches, to free themselves from a public hanging, or deny that they were witches, saving their integrity, but subjecting themselves to an unjust public hanging.
In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, John Proctor, a proud and frustrated farmer of Salem, chooses to die rather than to give a false confession to witchcraft. Many might view this act as that of a selfless martyr; on the other hand, it can more readily be seen as the height of human stupidity in the face of vanity and pride.
The posters that were spread dehumanized the Japanese by depicting them in an animalistic way. The Japanese were depicted as rats, sea monsters, skunks, and snakes by a variety of media sources. The imagery of a snake was the most prevalent as it depicted the Japanese as “slithering snakes” to represent the fact that the Japanese were accused of selling United States secrets to the enemy. The depiction of the Japanese as various animals by media sources reinforced racist behavior and violence. The dehumanization of the Japanese transferred to the Japanese-American citizens because although they were American citizens, they were still Japanese. The actions of the Japanese residing in Japan that were responsible for the bombing of Pearl Harbor reflected on everyone that was Japanese, regardless of being American citizens. The Japanese-Americans were seen as “slithering snakes” the most because they resided in the United States and were more easily accused of selling United States secrets to Japan in an effort to spark the