The Crucible Mccarthyism Essay

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.

The 1950s was a chaotic time for the United States. China had just fallen to communist forces, Russia was in an arms race, and national security was at an all-time high. Accusations were flying against anyone thought to be a security risk, and throughout it all, Joseph McCarthy trumped the blame card more than anyone else. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller alludes to this period of time by using Abigail Williams to represent Joseph McCarthy and by using the General Court of Salem to represent the Division of Security.

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.

‘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.

Authors used their literary work to get a point across to the public in the story The Crucible; Arthur Miller used events and characters to show the similarities to McCarthyism which was prevalent in the 1950s. McCarthyism was associated with the period in the United Sates also known as the Second Red Scare. McCarthyism is very similar in the way that Joe McCarthy accused Americans of being communist and in The Crucible people were being accused of being witches. It is known that Arthur Miller wrote this story as a reaction to a tragic time in our history.

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

In the 1950’s there was a scare of communism and people were being accused of being communist. From the article “McCarthyism: Witch Hunting and Blacklisting in the 1950s” “McCarthy's claims continued into 1954, this time targeting the Army. For eight weeks, in front of millions of television viewers, McCarthy questioned Army officials, including many war heroes.” Many people were getting questioned about being communist even though there wasn’t any real proof. McCarthy had questioned a lot of people including two people that had been Secretary of State. He had made a list of questionable claims, he didn't have any real proof but the Senate called for a full investigation. In the article “Famous Speeches: Joseph McCarthy's “Enemies from Within”, “This is glaringly true in the State Department, where those who were born with every possible advantage are the ones who have been most traitorous.” He is saying that the people with the most opportunities and that the country has been good too have been traitors. There is no actual evidence to this statement. He is picking out a group of people and using them. Because of his experience in the Red Scare he was able to write “The Crucible”.

To talk about McCarthyism we must first look at what was going on in the United States at the time. WW II had just ended a few years prior, and the cold war was in full swing. Following WW II, for the US Government to be able to spend so much of the taxpayers money on the cold war, the Government had to get the US citizens behind them. To do this the US government started a propaganda campaign to scare the public into thinking the communists were bad and very dangerous people. That the communist people, their way of thinking, and their type of government had to be contained. There were several things that happened to help in-force what the government was saying. First Czechoslovakia and China fell to communism.

The message in which Miller writes teaches teenagers about what life was like in the centuries before their time, and what some of the themes in those times were; which are also parallel to what happened during Miller’s lifetime, in the era of McCarthyism, as it does in today’s social and political problems. All three of these eras have intolerance, hysteria, reputation, and empowerment woven throughout them. This is one of the reasons they are connected to each other.

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

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 order to be accurate in accusing someone of a crime, you must have the appropriate evidence to back up your story. In The Crucible, many people were accused of practicing witchcraft. The ones who confessed, were sentenced to jail and the ones who denied it, were killed. The only way they had to prove what was being done, was spectral evidence. Therefore, the only person known to tell the truth was the victim. McCarthyism involved communists, like The Crucible, those who were accused were sentenced to jail time. The parallels between The Crucible and McCarthyism are naming names, the lack of evidence, and rebellion against the government in which they served.

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’s purpose for writing The Crucible was to identify the conspiracies in America’s government regarding the “Red Hunt.” Just like in Salem, the people who were considered bewitched were regular everyday people that were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Evidence and proof of being witched was completely absent but it was the people’s ambition to come out on top and people’s motives to save their own skin that got many innocent people convicted of witchcraft and thus hanged. Just as the innocent people in Salem were condemned of witchcraft and sentenced to death, so to were American people being condemned of being “communist” during the time of the Cold War in America. People who thought a certain way and who felt a certain way about something were often times under the suspicion of the government of having been communist. The intense rivalry between the two superpowers raised concerns in the United States that Communists and leftist sympathizers inside America might actively work as Soviet spies and pose a threat to U.S. security.(http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/red-scare)