Review Of Arthur Miller's 'The House Committee On Un-American Activities'

The House Committee on Un-American Activities’ (HUAC) investigation in the 1950s accused figures who exercised their freedom of speech, leading to mistrust between the citizens and government, thus proving those in power have the tendency to abuse it and citizens must be vigilant in speaking up against the government. HUAC’s role was to investigate communist infiltration in the government and social figures. In the questioning of Arthur Miller, the officials of HUAC believed that since Miller believed it was socially acceptable to write about communism, he was directly supporting and encouraging it. Miller was outraged at this accusation, and expressed to HUAC the fault in their accusation by saying, “You fail to draw a line between advocacy and essence. Our law is based upon acts, not thought”.

The ‘essence’ referred to the fact that the government was punishing people for thinking a certain way out of fear. Out of fear of communism, and the belief that doing so would protect citizens from it, HUAC accused and charged people with crimes when they did not commit them. In reality, HUAC stripped away both high social figures and citizens of their rights to freedom of speech. In the political cartoon drawn by Herbert Block, two men are driving a vehicle carelessly while running over citizens and are continuing to do so without hesitating. This symbolizes HUAC abusing their powers as an excuse to try to protect the greater good. One man has the expression of anger on his face which demonstrates if any activity is not approved by the government, it would be considered a threat to America’s safety. Under the premise of wanting to protect American citizens, HUAC was given an excuse to abuse their powers and accuse anyone of being linked to communism. The quote captioning the cartoon reads, “It’s okay- We’re hunting