The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller, was published on January 22, 1953. This play was based on the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. He used the 1692 Salem Witch Trials as an allegory to show the similarities between the 1692 Trials and the 1950’s Red Scare and how hysteria tears apart a community. In The Crucible, the mass hysteria, imaginary fear/anxiety, of witchcraft uncontrollably spread into the Salem community leading to many innocent deaths. This draws a clear parallel to the 1950’s Red Scare where the scare for communists spread through the United States of America.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is a dramatic film with points of comedy created in 1993. This film takes place in the serene and rural, but fading, town of Endora, Iowa. Gilbert Grape, a twenty-four year old store clerk, is assumed with the obligation of monetarily providing for his family and caring for his developmentally disabled brother Arnie. Gilbert has two sisters, Emily and Amy, the aforementioned Arnie, age seventeen, and his morbidly obese mother Bonnie, a widower of seventeen years. Gilbert’s father who committed suicide following Arnie’s birth, which initiated Bonnie’s battle with depression and gorging.
Author of The Crucible, Arthur Miller, used it to symbolize the American government's authoritarianism that made the nation fearful of the alleged "communists" infiltrating America. The novel takes place during the time of the Salem Witch trials. Salem's official court advanced false accusations of witchcraft that led to many people being wrongfully accused and executed. In the story, those who believed in witchcraft were seen as the ingroup, whereas those who did not were seen as the outgroup and were working with the "devil. "Demonstrating how Fascists force societies into going along with their beliefs.
Throughout history the fear of corruption and change has compelled people to go to drastic measures to prevent it. The Crucible, a play by arthur Miller, is set in an environment of religious citizens who fear that the devil and witchcraft will corrupt their society. Much like The Crucible, McCarthyism caused the citizens in America to fear corruption of the government by communism. Arthur Miller used his play the crucible as a direct response to McCarthyism and through this play Miller writes about the Salem witch trials during the McCarthy period to comment on how history repeats itself. The social and political factors in The Crucible resemble those in America during the red scare and McCarthyism.
In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, he portrays the Salem Witch Trials as an allegory for the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Miller’s intent in writing, The Crucible, was made clear in the preface when he said, “this play is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian. ”(Miller, 3) Miller wasn’t focusing exclusively on the Salem Witch Trials, but rather he was showing how people’s lies could quickly escalate to suspension then to panic. The purpose of Miller’s play was to highlight the cyclical nature of history. In the fifties, Miller wrote The Crucible during the hysteria surrounding the Red Scare and McCarthyism.
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible was written when Joseph R. McCarthy sprung forward with a list of so-called communists in our government. This was an action that helped create the red scare throughout america, in which many would be accused of communism with little proof. Miller showed that by writing what's seen as a metaphor for a modern day witch hunt. His story gives us a good chance to know the characters with rich text allowing deeper analyzation of them. Many become personally affected in which we can see following each ACT.
Miller wrote The Crucible as a response to the McCarthy era and the witch hunts that characterized it. He saw parallels between the two events and used the play as a way to criticize the unjust prosecution of people without evidence. In The Crucible, characters are accused of witchcraft based solely on hearsay and rumors. Similarly, during McCarthyism, individuals were accused of being communist sympathizers without any concrete evidence to support the claims. In “The Crucible '' Rebecca Nurse is accused of killing Ann Putnam's babies with witchcraft.
The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, was written in response to the abuses of power under McCarthyism, a period in the 1950s when the United States government conducted a witch hunt for supposed communists. The play draws parallels between the Salem witch trials of 1692 in Massachusetts and the Red Scare and its investigations in the 1950s. McCarthyism led to the false accusations of thousands of people, and those accused lost their jobs. Similarly, the Salem witch trials had false accusations that led to the deaths and imprisonment of hundreds. We can see another parallel in more modern situations where people use their power to prosecute others.
The Crucible, a play written by Arthur Miller in 1953, is a powerful depiction of the events that took place during the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts in the late 17th century. At the same time, it can be seen as a story from the McCarthy era, which was a time of political repression and anti-communist hysteria in the United States in the 1950s, it was also known as the Red Scare. The Red Scare was a period of time where people were scared of Communism since after WWl, the Russian leaders were overthrown and they encouraged other countries to rise up and do so as well. The parallels between the events in The Crucible and the McCarthy era are numerous and striking, and they reveal the dangers of fear, mistrust, and false accusation.
In 1953 Arthur Miller wrote the play, The Crucible. Arthur Miller wrote the play to display to the American people the inner workings of politics during the communist hysteria. Similar to U.S. politics, the people of Salem were accused of being witches, just as people were accused of being communists. The hysteria of witchcraft lead to many accusations and the death of 19 innocent people. The accusations made were motivated by personal desires of the accusers.
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible during a time of mass hysteria in the 1950's. During the 50's, a great fear of communism was very real within the United States. He connects this time with another period of mass hysteria, the Salem witch trials, by using ideas such as: fear is always based around a grain of truth, groups begin to form in search of the accused, and the best option for survival is to confess and accuse someone else. During the witch trials, it was a near fact in society that witches walked among us.
Reasons Behind The Crucible Arthur Miller’s main purpose in writing The Crucible was to show the similarities between the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Trials and to warn against government propaganda. At the time that The Crucible was published, America had a huge fear of communism. Anyone accused of having ties with the communist party was shunned. It much resembled the Salem Witch Trials in how the government, or leader of the time, used fear against the people to gain power. For example, Joseph McCarthy can be compared to Reverend Parris in how they both lead the people into the belief that there were intruders in their mists that had plans to sabotage the community.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller is based on the true events of the Salem witch trials. Set in the 17th century The Crucible told the story of a town that ensued a hunt for witches, caused by the accusations of Salem 's young girls and their ring leader Abigail Williams. Arthur Miller wrote this play to symbolize 1950’s McCarthyism. Most readers are unfamiliar with McCarthyism. So for a brief explanation, McCarthyism was carried out under senator Joseph McCarthy during 1950-1954 against alleged communist in the US government and in other institutions.
Hysteria in Salem The Crucible is a play written by American author, Arthur Miller, in 1953. It is a somewhat fictional play about the Salem Witch Trials. Miller wrote it as an allegory to the Red Scare, the promotion of fear of a potential rise of communism. Miller himself was blacklisted for refusing to testify in front of the HUAC, a committee that was created to investigate any person who might be a communist.
Battles with our inner self exist in everyday life, whether it is an emotional, spiritual or mental issue. These types of struggles are common in each person’s according to their conviction of life. In a recently study made by the University of Indiana proof that a highly percent of the population is afraid to be themselves or to act as they want to, by the repression they receive of society. Individuals work hard to establish and organize their life so society can accept them or can’t criticize them, causing an abuse in the essence of each human being. This obstacle of life is common since humanity exists and to show a clear example of this struggle Robert Louis Stevenson explained us in his classic novel “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” the consequences of this issue where he uses personification and simile to show that repression builds a conflict between the public appearance and the inner essence of Dr. Jekyll.
