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Essay On The Crucible Allegory

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The Crucible, published in 1953 by Arthur Miller is a very popular book written about the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. While most people use the book to study the Witch Trials, with closer examination it is easy to conclude that it is a direct allegory to the Red Scare and the McCarthy era of 1950s America. An allegory is an extended metaphor in which the characters or objects in the story represent an outside meaning. The Crucible is an allegory to the Red Scare and the McCarthy era drastically by its plot, characters, and the flow and outcome of the court trials. To begin with, The Crucible is an allegory because the plot of the book closely resembles the events that occurred during the Red Scare. The Crucible is about the Salem Witch Trials, …show more content…

An example of this would be Judge Danforth from the Crucible. Danforth was a real judge of the trials, and his character in the book was an allegory to Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy. In 1950s America, McCarthy led the House of Un-American Activities Committee, a group that investigated and tried people accused of being Communists. Like Danforth, McCarthy was widely feared due to the high power he held. Also, one of the prominent men accused and executed in the Crucible, John Proctor, was also a real person, based on Arthur Miller himself. During the Red Scare, Miller was blacklisted and questioned in court about being a Communist. In opposition, he posed the argument that the trials threatened freedom of expression. In the Crucible, Proctor argued the legitimacy and the corruption of the trials in court, and he was also accused of witchcraft. Lastly, the court cases for the accused in the Red Scare and the Salem Witch Trials were very alike. In both events, there was only one way to get out of being charged. In the Crucible, the accused would hang unless they confessed to witchcraft or gave a name of someone else who was a witch. During the McCarthy era, people put on trial for being a Communist were either expected to give names of other Communists, or they would be subject to

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