The Crucible Comparison Essay

The threat of Communism and the Red Scare put fear of group mentality into many people during the late 1940-50s. The authors of 1984 and The Crucible used their respective works to comment on the social injustice going on in their own lives, which connects to injustice the exists throughout time anywhere in the world. Miller wrote his play, set in 1692, about Puritans and the Salem witch trials because he believed that, similar to his trial for HUAC in the 1950s, the trials in Salem were caused by false accusations and mass hysteria led by powerful individuals. In 1984, Orwell creates a world in the near future that shows group mentality and its threat to conform society with the government. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller illustrates a world

Miller believed that there was an “element of the marvelous in it” that he had to make into a play (Miller 96). Since there was so much going on in America with mass panic, it made Miller think of other points in history when Americans were put into a great panic over something so inane. He had studied witchcraft slightly in college, so once he went back to it and read a book by Charles W. Upham he “knew (he) had to write about the period” (Miller 96). Once Miller had researched enough about the people surrounding the events, he began writing. The witch trials are a perfect comparison to the HUAC trials of Miller’s time. They both stemmed from common people attempting to gain power and good standing within the community. They also both exemplified the outrageously corrupt government of the time periods. The play goes to show that “those who don 't know history are doomed to repeat it” (Edmund Burke). Both governments believed the common citizens about any accusations they had. The courts also believed in the guilty until proven innocent mindset. Since the two time periods were hauntingly similar, it was no question why Miller chose to write The Crucible set in Salem to relate to America in the Cold