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Arthur miller usesthe crucible to critique society's
Arthur miller's hidden meaning behind the crucible
Arthur miller usesthe crucible to critique society's
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The Crucible and McCarthyism: What are the Parallels? Is it true that history repeats itself in different ways? McCarthyism and The Crucible have a lot of common despite them being in different time periods. The Crucible is a book written by Author Miller, which explained why the witch trails that took place in Salem, Massachusetts during the 1600’s. Author Miller wrote The Crucible because he got accused of being a communist during McCarthyism period.
When Miller wrote The Crucible it was during the time of McCarthyism which occurred in the 1950 's. McCarthyism appeared because of Joseph McCarthy, he believed that there were communist people who had prominent roles in the US and felt they should be investigated and removed. While McCarthy was investigating the safeguards from the Constitution were forgotten about. When he introduced the idea of communism in Americas high ranking people, President Truman began doing background checks on everyone who was in service for the government. After Alger Hiss, a high-ranking State Department official, being classified as a communist, McCarthy began to feed/capitalized of the fear of the people and stated there were communist spies and he was there
The Crucible and McCarthyism The Crucible is as a 1950’s play which is an allegory that compares McCarthyism to the Salem witch trials. The drama written by Arthur Miller is based on the Salem witch trials and it captures the hysteria and the unjust judicial system at the time. McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations without the proper evidence and The Crucible based its drama off the historical documents of McCarthyism. “The 1950s Part One: McCarthy and the Red Scare” describes Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare is greater detail.
From Salem to McCarthy: How Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" highlights the dangerous consequences of fear and political hysteria. McCarthyism and the Salem witch trials are two significant events in American history, separated by over 200 years. However, they share many similarities in terms of their impact on American society and culture. Both events involved accusations of wrongdoing without sufficient evidence, leading to the persecution of innocent people. In the Salem witch trials, people were accused of practicing witchcraft, while in McCarthyism, people were accused of being communists.
The Crucible was a work of fiction, by Arthur Miller, that weaved real events of the Salem Witch trials. Within the narrative of the play, adultery and jealousy lead to false accusations of the community of Salem. In relation to The Crucible, two non-fiction events that carry the same theme is the Patriot Act and McCarthyism. The Patriot act is a law that was passed after the events of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2011, and McCarthyism is the paranoia and invasive suspicion that followed suit. All three occurrences have similarities between the power of the government and the separation of the people.
Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, is an allegory for the McCarthy era in the 1950s. The McCarthy era is described as a period of fear about the potential rise of Communism, creating hysteria among the American society. Senator Joseph McCarthy holds the responsibility for stirring up the paranoia towards Communist activity in the United States, specifically making accusations for present communists within the United States government. The accused individuals were then followed up with unfair investigations that McCarthy directed. Within the investigations, people were to admit being a communist and be blacklisted, or not confess and be prosecuted.
Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” a partially fictionalized play that depicts the Salem witch trials, is similar to the “Red Scare,” a series of government’s actions which were provoked by Senator McCarthy’s paranoia about the presence of communists within the American government. For instance, in “The Crucible,” Reverend Parris, the head of the Salem church and the village, uses the witch trials to assert his political dominance over the townspeople in the same manner that McCarthy used the “Red Scare” to justify the eradication of “the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by the [United States]” (McCarthy). Likewise, the gathering by McCarthy of “[fifty-seven] cases of individuals who would appear to be either card carrying
“The Crucible” by Arthur Miller in 1953 portrays the realistic story of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. During the 1950s, the “Red Scare” occurred in the United States. The “Red Scare” was a massive wave of hysteria that hit U.S. citizens and people were convinced there was going to be a communist takeover. Arthur Miller wrote “The Crucible” to draw an allegory between the trials held by McCarthy and the trials held for the supposed “witches” of Salem. The allegory was that during both times of U.S. history, people were convinced that they were attacked by an unseen enemy.
The immense fear and paranoia of witchcraft in Salem which led to the brutal hangings of 18 innocent people with 1 pressed to death. We can see how Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, an allegorical tale of the events of McCarthyism in the 1950s helped forward his message. Consequently, during the play, The Crucible, we witness many vivid examples of fear and persuasion used in Salem. Miller provides examples that relate to the scare of communism through real-life events of the witch trials. Nevertheless, he compares the role of fear and persuasion in Salem to the Red Scare with McCarthyism.
In The Crucible Miller creates an analogy of the witch hunts in Salem to the investigation of communists by Joseph McCarthy. One of the many resemblances’ that can be
The Red Scare during the mid-twentieth century, sparked by Joseph McCarthy’s accusations, is an event in which mass fear and paranoia of communism hypnotized Americans. Convictions made by McCarthy often placed people on a blacklist, destroying their careers. Because of these certain events, it influences playwright Arthur Miller to write The Crucible. The play demonstrates this hysteria through the Salem witch trials. People who were thought to be a witch have a choice of blackening their reputation by confessing, or hanging under the false evidence of witchcraft.
In the opening of Act One of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, it is clearly shown that the play is about a period in American history known as the Salem witch trials. Much has been made, however, out of the historical moment in which Arthur Miller wrote the play—the McCarthy era—and it has been argued that The Crucible was Miller’s attempt to come to terms with and understand contemporary social dynamics that were being caused by Joseph McCarthy. McCarthyism was a time in American History when a Wisconsin Senator claimed he had a list of name of communists and began accusing innocent people. In many ways, “The Crucible” in the McCarthy Era exemplify the same thoughts, the two topics illustrate hysteria while people are wrongly accused, fear
In a 1999 lecture, Arthur Miller described the height of McCarthyism as “being trapped inside a perverse work of art, one of those Escher constructs in which it is impossible to know whether a stairway is going up or down” (Clapp 366).” Miller spoke of his play, The Crucible, in that lecture, and the confusion he felt at the hysteria of the time. The history and the play parallel each other so much that it makes them inseparable in analysis. The Crucible, in respect to the McCarthy era, becomes a fun house mirror that distorts yet reveals a truer nature of the source. This kind of reflection appears in the corresponding attitudes, beliefs, and conditions that allow for and breed the hysteria living in late 17th Century Salem, and 1950's America.
The main idea behind Arthur Miller’s fictional play, The Crucible, is that no matter the circumstances, if someone was accused of witchcraft, they were automatically considered guilty no matter how high up in social class ranking they were even if there was no sign of any factual proof or evidence. There are many parallels between situations in the play and what was happening at home in the United States throughout the Red Scare in the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time the play was first written, citizens in the United States were being charged with the offense of being communists or spies for the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which was considered one of the most serious, if not biggest crimes back then. Along with that and situations in
In the play The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, tells a series of events leading to a mass hanging of what were thought to be witches in Salem in 1692. Corrupted by fear, people, especially women, were spitting out names to keep themselves safe. This hysteria lasted up to 9 months. Based on true events, this is much like the communist scare of the 1950’s from Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. This was called McCarthyism.
