The Red Scare

In the long years between 1947 and around 1957, fear of communism froze the very voices of America into unison. A supposedly enlightened country, the United States of America succumbed to the mass hysteria of the Red Scare with shockingly little resistance. Communist “Reds” and Communist sympathizing “Pinks” were seen everywhere and were often persecuted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (also known by the inaccurate acronym HUAC). Many of these individuals’ only crime was that of sensibility; they saw the truth behind the terrifying chaos. One of the best records of this dark chapter in America’s history is its literature, which expressed opinion when it could be dangerous to do so. The American public’s paranoid fear of communism and other extremist organizations is evident in the literature of the period, which reflects the conformist mind frame.

World War II had barely ended when the Cold War began in 1945 and with it, a time in which American culture stressed patriotism and fervent hatred of anything remotely Communist. The fear and paranoia of the cold war eliminated social and political nonconformity and created a strict, conformist society where traditional values of family, domesticity, and religion were forcefully embraced by most Americans (Maltz 61). For works by authors such as Ayn Rand, who detested the very principal of communism, this meant a wildly enthusiastic acceptance. In her 1946 novella Anthem, Rand wrote about a dystopian society in which the motto is “We are one in all and all in one./There are no men but only the great WE./ One, indivisible and forever” (Rand 19). The protagonist, Equality 7-2521, later known as Prometheus, is ‘cursed’ with an individualistic streak that will not allow h...

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... sponsor” (Ross 263). In fact, by the late 1950’s, sixty-eight-percent of American’s wanted to make communism illegal, in a blatant disregard for the First Amendment of the Constitution (Zeinert 67). Books such as George Orwell’s 1984 portrayed a world in which the Party ruled supreme, and Big Brother was always watching in a totalitarian-communist government reminiscent of the Soviet Union. Similar to Anthem in its dystopian abuse of basic human rights, 1984 differs in that the Party is not an unintelligent force, ruling through numbers alone. The Party is a cunning, powerful and ruthless enemy, skilled in the art of psychological warfare and the breaking of souls. This version of communism, efficient, intelligent, and manipulative, reflects the changing perception of communism within the public; as the fear of the threat grew, that which was feared gained power.