Paradox In The Crucible

At first glance the book The Crucible can look like an ordinary book that is dramatized and fictionalized, but when you look further into the story you will find that it has a much deeper and underlying message. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is an allegory for the Red Scare in the McCarthy era because people accused others of witchcraft with no evidence, they believed whoever had this spirit in them were sinful, and whoever were accused it affected their lives horrendously.

The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, revolves around the lives of the townspeople during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The Salem Witch Trials was an era full of distrust, betrayal, and hysteria of the supernatural, in which many innocent lives were taken out of disparity. The author, Arthur Miller, went through a similar circumstantial situation during the Red Scare, the era of Communism. Miller compares to the townspeople of Salem as both were under fire and accusation, one for being a witch and the other for being a Communist. Such as the paranoia spreading through the town of Salem, mass hysteria was spreading like wildfire during Miller’s time period. The Crucible displays on how fear can take over one's mind and emotions.

More than 200 people were accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials and authorities were so convinced that twenty of them were even killed for it (Blumberg). The Crucible is a historically fictitious play that takes place during the Salem Witch Trials and is used by Arthur Miller to compare the Red Scare to the Witch Trials. The Red Scare took place during the mid-1940s to the mid 1950s; it was a time period when many Americans were terrified of Communism and accused one another of being so without substantial evidence. These two are similar because they were both a hunt for things that did not exist in great numbers or at all in their respective times or places. Arthur Miller uses The Crucible to criticize the Red Scare by subtly comparing the two since they were both “witch hunts.”

Miller faced a lot of criticism when his play went public. The initial response to Miller’s “The Crucible” revolved around the charge that “such an analogy was specious—that there never were any witches but there certainly are Communists” (Miller 160). But it was a flawed argument from the start as Miller points out [In the 17th century, however, the existence of witches was never questioned by the loftiest minds in Europe and America…Of, course

The Crucible by Arthur Miller, is a play which examines the terrible events of the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts as an allegory to the Red Scare in the early 1900’s. In his book, Arthur Miller draws parallels between both events in an attempt to show the pitfalls of human nature. In All the Pretty Horses, renowned author, Cormac McCarthy, writes, “What is constant is history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God - who knows all that can be known - seems powerless to change” (239). McCarthy accurately depicts the dark side of human nature, specifically related to the events in the Salem Witch Trials. The Crucible exemplifies the themes of greed, foolishness, and a lust for blood.

The Crucible, a play written by Arthur Miller, is based in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Salem, a small village, was a hotspot of mass hysteria and paranoia. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller shows that in the Salem witch trials, for many people fear is a greater motivator than morality. Fear is caused by the threat of danger, pain or harm and morality is the principles concerning write or wrong. In The Crucible,The characters that put morality above fear turn out to be a victim of unjustness because for many characters, the threat of witches and the pain and harm of the loss of loved ones is more of a motivator than truth, respect and justice.

They killed for no reason; the tortured souls were prosecuted and executed without a cause. The devastating play Arthur Miller wrote in 1953 shook the post-World War Two world and quickly began its way to the top of the playwrights world. He displays the horrendous acts in The Crucible by focusing on the agony that was caused, lies that were told, and devastation that was given around a Puritan culture telling the story in a seventeenth-century society focusing on the Salem Witch Trials. This play was written over half a century ago and still influences individuals across the world today. Communism is rampant in today’s world, yet Miller created an allegory in The Crucible, uniting the Red Scare and the Salem Witch Trials as one. In the play The Crucible, Arthur Miller melds several different types of symbolism throughout his play to caution his audience about the dangers

The Salem witch trials were a series of accusations upon men and women; these people could either plead guilty and survive or plead innocent and be put to death. If a person pleads guilty, their allegations with the devil would be broken. Arthur Miller noticed the similarities between the Salem witch trials and the red scare of the mid 1950’s. These events inspired Miller to write The Crucible. In the American playwright Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the characters lie to manipulate others in order to protect their reputation.

The crucible by Arthur Miller, is a play that deals with conflicts involved in the Salem witch trials of 1692. The characters in Miller’s theocratic society are not only in conflict with their environment, but with each other and their religious authority.

In his play The Crucible, published in 1953, writer Arthur Miller used the time period of the Puritans to convey his warning about the McCarthy era. Through his dramatization of various conflicts within the Salem community, Miller opened the Twentieth Century eyes to the witch hunt conducted by Senator Joe McCarthy. Using the motifs of power struggles, accusations, and confessions depicted the conflicts between Abigail and Mary Warren, John Proctor and himself, Reverend Hale and Parris and Tituba to convey the theme that fear makes people believe and do things they normally would not do.

Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953. He wrote this because he wanted to address the similarities of the events in 1692 and in the 1950’s. The Crucible described what occurred throughout the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. Miller found inspiration for his play through the Anti-Communist dispute in the 1950’s. The Witch Trials connected heavily with the Communist hunt, however, the events in the 1950’s were not the only source of information that Miller found interesting and useful. Not only did The Crucible criticize the 1950’s, it also sent out a universal statement that looked over the topic of conformity versus freedom. This debate raises questions today, such as: how should someone deal with having to conform to the ideology of today’s

The Crucible is a 1953 novel written by Arthur Miller. The play is a fictionalized take on the Salem witch trials that took place in the Salem Massachusetts, between 1692 and 1693, one of the nation 's worst cases of mass hysteria it resulted in the execution of twenty people. Miller wrote the play to reflect McCarthyism during the cold war when the U.S congress began to blacklist accused communists. Miller himself was later accused of possibly being involved in the communist party. Throughout the play many characters are accused for a plethora of reasons whether that be hysteria, reputation, etc. One of the main motivations many of the accusers had was to revenge on those whom they did not favor for their own personal reasons and gain. In Arthur Miller’s the Crucible characters Abigail and Parris use red herring and ad hominem in order to maintain their reputation, avoid persecution and gain revenge over those whom they did not favor.

The Crucible by Arthur Miller makes one reflect on one’s morals as the play unfolds. The 1953 play revolves around the town of puritan Salem and the actual people and events of the famous Salem witch trials. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in the height of the Red Scare, and his play reveals the mass hysteria and paranoia which plagued America at the time. Many of the innocent people accused in both Salem and in the 1950’s faced not only a biased court, but a questioning of morality as the choice often was oneself gets jacked or one discloses one’s cohorts in the crime.

The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller in 1953, the play is based on the events surrounding the 1692 Salem witch trials. That year, the puritan New England village went through an episode of mass frenzy that lead to a wave of witchcraft accusations and a large number of executions. When reading Miller’s enthralling piece, it is easy to forget that the events that actually happened in Salem and the events portrayed by the author differ quite significantly. These non-negligible modifications have a large impact on a reader’s understanding of the trials. The author himself makes a note on the historical accuracy of the play at the beginning of his piece stating that “it [the play] is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian” and that so little is known about the characters involved that “they may be taken as creations of my [Miller’s] own” (Crucible 2).

The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller in 1953. It is a dramatized with some sort of fictionalized tales of the Salem witch trials during 1692 and 1693. It was his most resilient play, Miller wrote the play as accused communists, and he sees The Crucible as it explodes the realm of conscience. Miller uses the historical events to illustrate the moral tyranny during the witchcraft hurts in Salem (Marino 78).