Red Scare And Mccarthyism In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

When the Salem Witch Trials are remembered at face value, the sinister events that took place within the puritan community seem so surreal, so deranged, that it becomes easy to ignore the very real and dangerous implications they make of human nature and capability. It is easy to think that such heinous things could never occur in modern society. Arthur Miller, the author of The Crucible, takes that assumption and uses it to expose the absurd injustice of modern events by creating a play that employed the infamous Salem Witch Trials as an allegory of his own experiences with the Red Scare and McCarthyism during the Cold War. McCarthy, the main anti-communist leader during the Red Scare, was known as a man who unapologetically made accusations against people to undercut their credibility and bolster his own influence.

The most notable similarity between these two systems is the total lack of physical, undeniable proof of wrongdoing, as Judge Danforth even admits to Proctor “witchcraft is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? The witch and the victim. None other” (). When there is no plausible way to prove the guilt or innocence of a man, the threat of the transgressions potentially being committed becomes more intimidating. It is simply human nature to seek for reasoning behind the misgivings one may receive, but when these small, defensive measures against witchcraft or communism escalated into suspicion that began cropping up as fast as weeds, it transformed into uglier offensive strides towards the eradication of evildoers, and life started spiraling downhill for many