Essay On Mccarthyism In The Crucible

In both The Crucible and McCarthyism, people are accused of being either witches or communists. The accused are placed in such a dire situation where they are either forced to lie to save themselves, or to remain honest, at the risk of their social or physical lives. In The Crucible, John Proctor is accused of practicing witchcraft, and when asked if he is a witch, he responds,“Why it is a lie, it is a lie; how may I damn myself? I cannot, I cannot.” (Act IV pg. 140) He refuses to confess to something he did not do, even if lying means that he can save his life. During the McCarthy trials, people who were accused of being communists refused to confess that they were, although it hurt their reputation. In both

‘The Crucible’ is an allegory. An allegory is a story with an obvious meaning but if you look deeper into it, there is another meaning. In this case, the obvious meaning is the Salem witch-hunt and the hidden meaning is McCarthyism. McCarthyism started in the early 1950’s and it was governmental accusations with no evidence. Joseph McCarthy started doing trials on those he thought were communist, but he had no evidence for it. This is the same as the witch trials in The Crucible. Arthur Miller wrote this in response to McCarthyism.

The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, was not only a captivating play, but also a platform to fight against the iniquitous force of McCarthyism during the 1950s. Set in Salem, a town in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, the play dramatized the witch trials that brought widespread paranoia during 1692 to 1693. So to no one’s surprise, The Crucible and McCarthyism were juxtaposed. Since Arthur Miller wanted to criticize the acts of Senator Joseph McCarthy, he chose to express specific themes that appeared in both the play’s Puritan setting and in the United States. One of the major themes Arthur Miller wanted to convey through his work is the distrust of nature. In the remainder of this essay, I will be discussing the relationship of this theme to the play’s

During the 1940s and 1950s there was a mass hysteria in America because people suspected others of being Communist. A man named Arthur Miller wrote ‘’The Crucible’’ as a way to signify what was happening in the U.S. . He used this story to show how bad things were and how easy it was for people to be falsely accused of being Communist. Miller connects America's Red scare to his fictional story ‘’The Crucible’’ because in the fictional drama the normal people of Salem where falsely persecuted as witches and just like the people during the Red Scare , their lives were ruined beyond repair and they were even killed for suspicion of being a witch even if there was littler evidence to state them as being one.

The Crucible is a dramatic and fictional play that was written by American author Arthur Miller during the time period of McCarthyism in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Due to the fear of internal communist subversion that reached a nearly historical pitch; The U.S. Government investigated and also falsely accused many of its federal employees such as author Arthur Miller. Miller has written the Crucible as allegory of McCarthyism to declare his dissatisfaction of the government. He believed justice should still be existed in the court system even though it was influenced by trends such as anti-communism and religion.

A well renowned founder of western philosophy, Socrates stated,“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil”(Socrates). This quote relates to the evil that Senator Joseph McCarthy and antagonist Abigail Williams brought to their time. Abigail used her opportunities to strike fear into everyone in her town. Arthur Miller was one of the Hollywood 10 accused of being a communist and that affected his life which he wrote The Crucible to not only show the Salem Witch Trials but to give insight to the readers about the time during McCarthyism. The Salem Witch Trials were a series of witchcraft cases brought before local magistrates in a settlement called Salem which was a part of the Massachusetts Bay colony in the 17th century (History of the...,3). Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed that over 200 communist have infiltrated the U.S government, as result the 1947 Taft-Hartley act had an anti-Communist clause that required union leaders to take an oath stating that they were not communists (Facts about McCarthyism, 6). McCarthyism and The Crucible were very similar in the way they were governed, there judicial systems and the way they blamed people.

“Never let what you don’t know disturb your faith in what you do know” , this quote was one of the famous puritans quote during the time of the 1600s. Puritans were a group of christian people that lived based off of what they believe in. Until in the mid 1600s, an unfortunate event cause them to fall part; accusations of witchcraft. Arthur Miller who wrote “The Crucibles” uses the theme of how fear can motivate you to make different kind of actions to compare to MCcarthyism that occurred in 1950s. In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy was accusing citizens of communists with no proof, which is what Danforth the judge did in the book; accuses people of doing witchcraft without any evidence. Arthur Miller showcases each character with unique character traits to represent MCcarthyism.

The Salem witch trials and the McCarthy hearings happened in different time periods but have the same general ideas. These people would be considered free of the devil once they names others whom they had seen with the devil, if people refused to name others they would be hanged or put in jail awaiting a trial. During McCarthyism, which started during the Cold War, many government workers were accused of being Soviet spies (Reeves). This was very concerning to the people of America and made the

Imagine a situation where every day was encircled by mistrust and fear. Helpless, afraid, like an animal having to strictly follow the rules unless it wanted to be pointed out. This was the tone that Arthur Miller uses for his novel The Crucible. Wanting to comment on the mass anti-communist scare of the McCarthyism period, Miller wrote a historical fiction novel about the original “witch hunt”, the Salem witch trials. Paranoia, just like in Hollywood at the time, was what most colonists felt during the spring of 1692 in Massachusetts. Miller detailed the harassment that the inhabitants were subjected to by a group of girls led by a promiscuous seventeen year old. These girls started a religious hysteria among the Massachusetts colony by claiming that particular women living in the colony were in accordance with the devil. This led to many (as many as 200) people to become accused of being a witch or wizard; eventually being put in jail, or for some specific few, being hanged. Through the play, Miller really shows how human beings are able to do fearful things, but at the same time, he shows us how human beings are able to forgive. One of these examples being the growth of a Puritan couple consisting of John and Elizabeth Proctor, who is initially shown to the audience as a broken couple, being that John had relations with Abigail.

The best well-known literary work dealing with McCarthyism is the Arthur Miller drama, The Crucible. In many ways the story of the Salem Witch Trials began in Europe; historian Brian Levack explains that the great European Witch Hunts stretched from the 1450’s to the 1750’s. During the McCarthy Era in America, fear, and anxiety grew over the goals and tactics of international communism. The term McCarthyism has become synonymous with “witch hunts” it describes the techniques used in the early 1950’s by Senator McCarthy, the committee conducted public hearings on supposed infiltration by communists of the United States government especially the State Department, and the entertainment industry. There are many similarities between McCarthyism

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” This quote is from a play written in 1953 by famous essayist and playwright Arthur Miller titled The Crucible. This play follows several witch trials in Salem Massachusetts in the late 1600s. This play was, of course, based on the actual Salem Witch trials that occurred during the same time, but what if I told you that this play was inspired by 1950’s communism? In fact, the meaning and thematic significance of the quote above directly parallels that of an event, in the 1950s, involving communism.

After World War Two, Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, was beginning to gain more power over surrounding countries, and the people of the United States of America became concerned about the possibility of communists taking over the world. The Soviets had recently created and tested its first atomic bomb, and thus many were afraid that there would be an apocalyptic nuclear war between their two countries. Starting in 1947 and continuing throughout the fifties, all citizens of America were requested to have background checks done on them by the government to make sure they were not Soviet spies. After one state official, Alger Hiss, was convicted of espionage, Americans became extremely

The playwright “The Crucible” can be seen as a direct allegory to the Red Scare in the 1950s. The so-called witch hunt, where many people were accused of working with Devil, is a direct symbol of the United States when Joseph McCarthy “made a public accusation that more than two hundred “card-carrying” communist had infiltrated the government(McCarthyism).” His accusation caused a widespread panic as suspicion spread among people in America. Accusations in “The Crucible” and during the McCarthy era were made in order to gain something personally without even the slightest thought about what could happen in the end. McCarthy started the panic to secure political popularity, and also be broadcasted everywhere; Abigail and many of the other townspeople

Arthur Miller was an brilliant play writer pulling together brilliant works like “The Death of a Salesman”,”All My Sons”, and the well known “Crucible”. Throughout Arthur Miller's social reflective commentary, through the “Crucible” using precise symbolism, about when power that's intent was for a select few is made public due to an fear of an unknown the public itself leads into hysteria and resorts to McCarthyistic answers. Millers symbolistic use throughout the “Crucible” provided inisight on his modern day communist hunts and what had led them to such monstrosities. Through the book Salem, Massachusetts had undergone three major theocratic changes of power, in the beginning we are told that Rebecca Nurse, a prominent figure in their church, “brick and mortar” of their church when she was

During the time The Crucible was set, the community of Salem was awry. It did not have the solid characteristics of what a healthy town should look like. Instead there was no trust between people, everyone was watching out for only themselves, and most of the townspeople were turning their backs on the disastrous deeds of the court. The people of Salem feel like they have no one to turn to, so fear crept into their minds and hearts. They developed hysteria which caused the town to slowly disintegrate. This panic allows other people in their community to take advantage of them and manipulate them for their own purposes. In his play, The Crucible, Arthur Miller shows how vengeance and greed destroy the community through the characters of Abigail Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Putnam, and Reverend Parris.