The Crucible Conflict Analysis

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's The Crucible, depicts the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 but is analogous to the McCarthy trials of the 1950s. In both situations, widespread hysteria occurs, stemming from existing fears of the people of that particular era. The Salem witchhunt trials parallel the McCarthy era in three major aspects: unfounded accusations, hostile interrogation of numerous innocent people and the ruination and death of various people's lives.

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.

In Miller’s lifetime, McCarthyism was happening. The Red Scare in the 1950s made everyone in the United States afraid of what communists in the United States might do to them. This intolerance between communists and non-communists caused distrust, suspicions, and mass hysteria during the Cold War in the United States, as it did in seventeenth century Salem. A person’s reputation during McCarthyism, however, could hurt them more then

Another major conflict in this story involves John Proctor basically fighting his conscience. After, he was later accused of being a witch, he was given the opportunity to save his life by confessing to what he had done. He thought hard to himself and confessed. But later, when he realized Rebecca Nurse had been accused of being a witch, and had not confessed to it, Proctor knowing her innocence, tore up his confession as to not feel like a coward and die for what was right. He ended up being hung just like Rebecca even though he had been completely innocent of witchcraft. This conflict was different from the other ones, in how it was not person-to-person but person vs. self

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.

“Why I Wrote The Crucible” by Arthur Miller discusses the widespread paranoia of the communist infiltration and the parallels that exist between the Salem witch trials

Arthur Miller writes about the tragic results of human failings in his play, The Crucible. He presents characters from the past and infuses them with renewed vitality and color. Miller demonstrates the horrifying results of succumbing to personal motives and flaws as he writes the painful story of the Salem witch trials. Not only do the trials stem from human failings but also from neglect of moral and religious considerations of that time. Characters begin to overlook Puritan values of thrift and hope for salvation. Focusing on the flawed characters, they begin to exhibit land lust, envy of the miserable and self-preservation.

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.*

Throughout history, many horrific incidents based on an act of violence or disagreement have resulted in panic and mass hysteria. These historical events include but are not limited to, The Holocaust, mass shootings, and 9/11. Many of these tragic events have led to people being immensely afraid. These events often create fear for those who participate in everyday activities. A healthy community consists of a support system, peace, trust, and adhering to societal laws. Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible, illustrates parallels between the Salem 17th century witch trials and the Communist Red Scare in the 1950’s to exemplify how destructive irrational fear and mass hysteria can become. When a community is overcome with fear it creates an insalubrious system of mistrust, corruption, hypocrisy, and the defiance of laws. Conflict relating to witchcraft in The Crucible, led to tension and struggle for the people of Salem. In his allegory, Arthur Miller illustrates the devastating impact of irrational fear on a community through the actions of the characters of Abigail Williams, Judge Danforth and Judge Hathorne.

The Salem judges think that if someone is religious then they are good people. This is not always correct, one lady could not remember her prayers and they thought she was a bad person. The audience realizes that remembering something has nothing to do with whether they are good or bad. This is similar to the US in the 50’s because they would have decided someone worthy of prison if they were suspected of being a communist sympathizer Miller was trying to put across the message to people to get them to think about what their evidence really means and if what people are convicted over is actually meaningless. Miller himself felt how unjust the system could be.

There are multiple types of conflict in The Crucible that forwards the plot, these types of conflict are in the play and most characters have some type of conflict with another person, the town, or themselves. The Crucible is a play that is absolutely filled to the brim with conflict and is set in the time period of the Salem Witch Trials that lasted from February 1692 up until May 1693. In the play, many people were deceived, accusations were thrown around town, and people were hung or burned at the stake.

A psychological analysis of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible reveals that the work prompts the audience to subconsciously reflect upon the central issues in a state of introspection, indirectly guiding individuals to question not only the morality of the events which took place in Salem, but also the ethics of the people behind the actions. They are forced to contemplate their own human responses to aspects of modern life and consider the driving forces that have directed similar mass persecutions in other historical periods, such as World War II and the Cold War. However, one underlying question remains: What psychological factors are responsible for this - the capability of humans to commit such deplorable acts onto each other? After a

Once the people of Salem fully realize their fear, Miller shows how they try to justify this fear, but that they are in fact becoming more and more hysterical. They now try to find a justification for thoughts and their fear of evil. They need some solid proof to back up these accusations that they make, and they need to clear their own names as well. So, they arbitrarily start claiming that “[they] saw…with the Devil”, and that “[they] saw…with the Devil” (45). These unjustified explanations for their fears just shows how truly corrupted their minds become. They start naming their own friends, neighbors, and even their own family in order to clear themselves and more importantly to try to prove that this witchery is really upon them, and to prove that they are not just crazy. What it really does is show how hysteria is setting in, and how they have actually accepted these lies as the truth. While questioning each other on the matter, their breakdown can really be seen through their quick, almost sputtering manner of speaking:

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.