How Did Arthur Miller Choose To Write The Crucible

The Crucible was written as an allegory for the McCarthy era in 1953 by Arthur Miller; an American playwright. The McCarthy era was epitomized by the fear of Communism that Senator McCarthy whipped up. He fostered a witch hunt against anyone who disagreed with his views. Miller’s intention was that the play would be a parody of his own context (himself) with John Proctor quite evidently being a reflection of Miller. The witches in the play symbolized communism. A ‘Crucible’ can mean both; "a container for melting or purifying metals by heat" and "a severe test." Miller describes the village of Salem as ‘the container’ and its contents; the God-fearing residents of Salem along with their emotions. This ‘purification process’ is exactly what

The horrors of history are passed on from generation to generation in hopes that they will never occur again. People look back on these times and are appalled at how horrendous the times were; yet, in the 1950s, history repeated itself. During this time, Joseph McCarthy, a United States senator from Wisconsin, began accusing people of being communists or communist sympathizers, which is parallel to the Salem witch trials in the late 1690s when innocent people were accused of practicing witchcraft. One of the people McCarthy accused was author and playwright Arthur Miller. To express his outrage at McCarthy’s actions, miller wrote The Crucible, intentionally drawing similarities between the McCarthy hearings and the Salem witch trials.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, communism was a major threat to the United States. Joseph McCarthy, a senator at the time, attempted to capitalize on this by accusing over two hundred men and women of sneaking communism into the United States government or for supporting the cause.* Among these two hundred men and women were several authors, including Arthur Miller. In explaining his reasoning for writing The Crucible, Miller said, ". . . my basic need was to respond to a phenomenon which, with only small exaggeration, one could say was paralyzing a whole generation and in an amazingly short time was drying up the habits of trust and toleration in public discourse."* After visiting Salem and researching the events of the Salem Witch Trials, Miller realized how the havoc of these events corresponded to the events in the 1940s and 1950s.*

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible focuses on the Salem Witch Trials along with the pointing of fingers that went along with it. Miller wrote this to reflect upon what was occurring during the Red Scare in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The Crucible is written in an ironic and cynical tone mocking the Red Scare.

In 1951, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, a play referring to the time in Massachusetts during the Salem witch trials. The Salem Witch Trials was a time period when people were being randomly accused of being witches by one another. The people who were accused of being witches had to either give false confessions or were executed in terrible ways. In The Crucible, the accused were sentenced to death by hangings, pressings, died in prison. In the play, nineteen people were hung, about thirteen died in prison, and one died by being pressed. In the play, the author Miller uses many examples of hyperbole and exaggeration as the characters are talking . The author also used imagery to describe the settings in the play. In The Crucible, the author wanted to give us a real life description of how that time period might have been. As the story goes on, we see the craziness of the salem witch trials and how absurd it was.

Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953. He wrote this because of his personal experiences with the Communist Witch Trials. Miller was known for always sharing his opinion out to the community. During this time Senator Joseph McCarthy play a major role in trying to prevent communism from spreading. Miller was an easy target for McCarthy and was accused of being a Communist. This caused Miller to become one of many victims of the Communist witch trials and her served time in jail. The Communist witch trials was what influenced Miller to write his play about the Salem witch trials in the 1600’s.The Crucible mimicked issues that both societies had. The play also exposed Senator Joseph McCarthy for abusing his political power. The play is mainly

Arthur Miller, born in 1915, mostly commonly known for his social commentary The Crucible. He wrote this play in response to the Red Scare of the mid 1950’s. Arthur Miller was a communist sympathizer, he wrote it in the theme of Salem in the 1600’s so he wouldn’t get into trouble for directly writing about communism in their current day.

The novel, The Crucible was written in 1953 by Arthur Miller, which was based on the Salem Witch Trials existing in the late 1600s. In the play, Abigail and several other young women accuse innocent citizens of Salem for the action of witchcraft. During the trials, many individuals were unfairly persecuted; such as John Proctor. This event in history may be associated with the Red Scare, in which individuals were tried for their questionable influences of communism in the United States. When Miller compares the character of John Proctor to himself, the reader is able to relate the similar experiences that both men faced. The Crucible demonstrates the struggle against corruption involving the court, which lead to the death of many innocent individuals in Salem. The Crucible generates an allegory for Arthur Miller’s struggles with McCarthyism because of his similar experience relating to John Proctor’s battle against the Salem Witch Trials, and the relation between the actions of the court in both situations. Arthur Miller uses several writing methods in order to convey The Crucible as an allegory for his struggles with McCarthyism. Miller demonstrates how the Crucible represents an allegory for his conflict with McCarthyism by relating his experiences with the plot of the novel. Miller relates the novel to his struggles by stating, “Should the accused confess, his honesty could only be proved by naming former confederates.” (Are You Now… 34) Miller is explaining how the court

The play The Crucible, was written by Arthur Miller in 1953. It is a story he wrote after his own experience being accused of communism. This affected a lot of well-known people in the United States during this time, and was considered a witch hunt similar to the Salem witch hunts. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible about a man, John Proctor, who has an affair with Abigail Williams. She catches feelings for him and tries to cast a spell on John Proctor’s wife to kill her; this gets out of hand when Abigail’s uncle catches her and some other girls dancing during the spell in the woods. Suddenly, the whole town is living in fear of who is practicing witchcraft, who could be a witch, and innocent people are killed if they don’t confess to being witches. Overall, mass fear and panic, and false accusations are seen over and over throughout the play.

One of the play writers that was blamed was Arthur Miller himself, and he had to suffer the consequence of prison for one year as there were no free trials. After Miller’s time in prison, he wrote the Crucible, an allegorical play in which Miller linked the situation of America going ‘hunting Communists’ to the ‘Witch Hunts’ in Salem.

Miller displays people saying false things to protect themselves, even if it means killing another person who is innocent. Jealousy, greed and grudges was shown during the content of The Crucible. Miller creates this image of Americans that is atrocious, all while using a true story. Miller wrote this book in the in 1950’s, during the time of the “communist witch hunt” Miller was even a victim of this, he was questioned during the process. His books tended to lean to the more political side, he used a historical reference to bring awareness to his modern times issues, such as the “communist witch hunt” and the characters of past and modern Americans. McCarthyism was an occurrence that took place in the time period of Miller. Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy began multiple hearings and investigation into communism in the United States government. His idea of wiping out all communist in America spreaded like a wildfire, so much so that he won reelection. The similarity between The Crucible and the “communist witch hunt” is uncanny. There is much symbolism in the book that relates back to McCarthyism, such as the girls in the book making false claims without having any proof. Sounds very familiar to the situation that occurred in the

The Crucible was a playwright made by Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller was inspired by the McCarthy Hearings, which led him to make the story on the Crucible. The Crucible was based on the real events which were the Salem Witch Trials which happened in the late 1600’s. The characters and events of the Crucible were based on the real events and characters that lived through the Salem Witch Trials. The Salem Witch Trials was one of the darkest and most injustice times in history and will be remembered to this day.

The Crucible is a play written in 1953 by Arthur Miller. It is based off of the 1662 Salem witch trials written as a parallel between this time period and the Red Scare, the time period in which he was living. There are many topics explored throughout the play, but the most important is hypocrisy, which can be seen in several characters.

Arthur Miller’s second best play was “The Crucible” which premiered in 1953. This play was definitely harder for Miller to write. He took his time on this and wrote it in twelve months. It was a reflection of the Salem Witch Trials that he read about during his time. He found his subject after reading “W. Upham's 1867 two-volume study of the 1692 Salem witch trials” and wrote it after “watching the filming of the new movie of ‘The Crucible’”. This novel was about the people of Salem, how they felt, and what was

The play, “The Crucible” is written by Arthur Miller in 1953. During this time of American history, a war had just ended and there was a deeply rooted fear of communists infiltrating American soil; Americans had begun to turn on each other out of fear that people around them were against American ideals. Arthur Miller expressed his concern for the time by writing “The Crucible,” which is written about a witch hunt that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Arthur Miller used the themes of an earlier American event to remind people of his time that their actions were indeed following a historical pattern of fear. The play, “The Crucible” takes place in America in a time of deeply rooted religion, fear of the unknown, and early civilization. The juxtaposition of this play, it’s characters, and the time in which the play was written, teaches a very difficult, yet important, lesson about fear and it’s position in a society of people.