Similarities Between The Alhurcible And The Crucible

Have you ever been accused of something? So to keep from getting into deep trouble you quickly exclaim ‘you saw so-and-so do this’. Suddenly, you’re put on a back-burner, as this new evidence is looked into. This is what happened back in the 1940’s. People in the U.S. were scared by Joseph McCarthy on the sudden rise in communism in other areas of the world, the closest being the Soviet Union. The Scare inspired Arthur Miller to write his play. The Crucible is an allegory for the Red Scare. Arthur Miller wrote the play to show people that the craziness of the witch hunts were extremely similar to the communist hunts, and to show the dangers of being quick to accuse others to avoid consequences.

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a tragic play set in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, where Miller uses the Salem Trials as a metaphor for the 1950s McCarthy hearings. In Salem, people value their good names. The Puritan community acts as a theocracy in which there appears to be no right to privacy, and people must conform to a strict moral code. The theme of reputation, lying, and deceit are shown in Abigail, John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, Mary Warren, and other characters. In the play’s dialogue, Miller uses Biblical allusions, situational irony, and dramatic irony to develop these themes.

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 made the play called “The Crucible” during the 1950’s as a response to McCarthyism and the U.S. Governments blacklisted people.”(Blakesley). Miller was then question and accused of “Contempt of Congress” for not identifying people that were at meetings he attended. McCarthyism and The Salem Witch Craft Trials have been two very wrong things that have happened in the history of the United States for a lot of reasons. First off they both wrongfully accused innocent people of performing not accepted actions of those times. In America you have a right of free will and in both cases they were denied this right just because of someone else’s opinion. In both cases of the Salem Witch Craft Trials and McCarthyism people were being accused of acts with little evidence. People pointed fingers at others so they wouldn’t get blamed for anything, so there was a scare factor taking place. Large groups of people supported these acts maybe because of a get on board everyone’s doing it theme, and if you disagreed you were considered a witch or a communist. Our country supported McCarthy until later we soon regretted it. During the 1940’s and 1950’s communism was a scare in the U.S. so McCarthy capitalized on the subject and said two hundred card carrying communist were in the U.S(PBS). With the Salem Trials people capitalized on the scare of witches and everyone starting accusing the “weird” people. Accusations weather true or false can

During the Red Scare, many were arrested and prosecuted for allegedly being Communists. Miller took these accusations and made a mockery of them in The Crucible. “The Salem tragedy… developed a paradox. It is a paradox in whose grip we still live, and there is no prospect yet that we will discover its resolution,” (Miller 6-7). Miller is directly saying that since the Salem Witch Trials, nothing has changed and that he sees no future in it ever changing. He later said that “the results of this process are no different now from when they ever were,” (Miller 34-35). Miller was well aware of everything going on and used that to his advantage in his writing. Miller knew that the Salem Witch Trials would relate to what was happening then.

Arthur Miller, an American playwright and the author of The Crucible, explained the incident involving within the series of Salem Witch Trials. The Crucible and the Second Red Scare demonstrated a comparison in order to establish an allegorical parallelism between the two. Joseph McCarthy caused the fear of communism throughout the American politics and culture, which referred to the Second Red Scare. In the play, the innocents got falsely accused of witchcraft without factual evidence, similar to the situation when McCarthy indicted numerous well-known, innocent Americans for un-patriotism. The parallelism based on the two events can be embodied through the fallacious allegations upon individuals employed by Miller and McCarthy: the mass hysteria that overwhelmed the innocent civilians, leading to an outbreak which occurred due to its chaotic presence, and the act of integrity over reputation put forth on the individual.

In Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” it tells the tale of the Salem Witch Trials. At the time of the play, the McCarthy trials, named after Sen. Joseph McCarthy, were underway. Though, instead of hunting for witches, they were hunting for communists. These two trials may have happened at different points in history, but were in many ways the same. Whether it was death to job loss a lot of lives were changed on account of these trials. “The Crucible” and the McCarthy trials have become historically important because they show the process of power, fear, and turmoil.

Martin Niemöller once said,“First they came for the communists, but I was not a communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.” The culture of accusations is a part of hysteria. As paranoia ensued in “The Crucible”, Joseph McCarthy made false allegations that influenced many peoples lives. An affair integrated in Arthur Miller’s play created controversy among the community. Trials were held for those accused and lying was the only way to survive. The harsh truth that was revealed in “The Crucible” and the parallels between the Red Scare and the Salem Witch Trials show patterns in which fear was used as an advantage, unsubstantiated claims occurred, and unethical punishments were given.

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.

As America entered the post-war era after World War II, there was still an ongoing sense of paranoia throughout the country. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, McCarthyism, initiated by Joseph McCarthy’s accusation of 205 Communists and the use of unjust methods to hunt Communists, arose. As this era emerged, Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, which highlighted and dramaticized the scandal of the 1692 Salem witch trials, gained popularity and opened on Broadway. Though the two events in American history, McCarthyism and the witch trials, lie almost 300 years apart, Miller’s The Crucible serves as an allegory to the closely mirrors the events of McCarthyism, specifically in the request of the names of those accused, the absence of reliable

The Crucible is the fictional story of the Salem witch trials in which many women were accused of being witches. The Crucible is written by Arthur Miller, who was recorded as the greatest American playwright (“Arthur Miller” 1). The scene for the play is based in the Massachusetts Bay Colony around 1692. McCarthyism was the act of accusing people of treason without evidence, attacks on a person's character, and attack on their patriotism by accusing many Americans of being communist (Ortega). Lisa Martin says, “Communists control led the two world superpowers, China and the Soviet Union Americans feared a takeover in their own country” (Martin 1). Many people tried to accuse the men and women who were spreading the fear. One man named Joseph McCarthy was a senator that charged communists that interfered with the U.S. State Department (“Joseph McCarthy” 1). The accusations lead to investigations, questioning and finding people guilty without evidence,

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” by Arthur Miller was written in response to McCarthyism in the 1950’s. In 1692 and 1693 the Salem witch trials took place in Salem Massachusetts. Girls believed to be involved in witchcraft were responsible for these trials. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s senator McCarthy came to office. Senator McCarthy and some of his allies were responsible for hysteria in the United States of America in the 1950’s. The scare was also in result of a communist scare after World War II and leading to the cold war. The behavior of the people of the Salem witch trials and Americans in the 19050’s resulted in a big scare in reaction to hysteria.

Life is valuable and precious that everyone alive possesses, but when you encounter the undeserved inevitable fate of cruel death or false charges, can you really protect yourself? The McCarthyism era brought the definition of despair upon the American people who does nothing but let it happen. The Crucible outlines the infuriating unfairness in the town of Salem of how their deepest grudges and apprehensions can cover their rationality. The saying of “history repeats itself” clearly represents the characters between The Crucible and the American people during the McCarthyism era proves how manipulation and lies can ruin them as a whole.