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The Crucible Dbq Essay

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The Crucible, is a play written by Arthur Miller and it was first produced on Broadway in January of 1953. This play came out during the same time period of Joseph McCarthy and the hysteria of the Red Scare. The Crucible is mainly about the Salem Witch Trials and the hysteria of the people that were being hanged just because they were accused of being guilty of witchcraft. The Red Scare which is also known as McCarthyism was solely based on the claims of Senator Joseph McCarthy and how he believed that over 200 communists were working in the State Departments. McCarthyism is the political practice of making public accusations of betrayal without having any evidence to back it up. During this time period, Joseph McCarthy was just one of the …show more content…

During the Salem Witch trials, people could only be proven guilty through testimony of the witch's “victims” or through a confession from the Witch herself. This is because witchcraft is not assumed to be an “ordinary crime” and it is an “invisible crime" which means that there are no witnesses (Doc D). This led to a lot of innocent deaths because people would just lie to save themselves and also if they did not admit to participating in witchcraft they could also be killed so a lot of innocents died because they did not admit they were witches. In the play Abigail Williams and the girls accused half of the town for witchcraft without having any concrete evidence for it other than they saw them “with the devil”. During McCarthyism, people were also punished because if they were accused of being communists they were blacklisted and outcasted even though they said they did not do anything and were not associated with communism. There was no way to prove that they were not communist and so all they could do was take the punishment and also give out more suspect names. This basically shows how in The Crucible and in McCarthyism they showed a lack of proof and that people were blamed solely on accusation which is not reliable. Also because of this, people ended up …show more content…

It shows mass fear and hysteria in The Crucible from the townspeople in the courts where they accepted all the absurd claims that the girls gave on witchcraft. An example of this is in Act III when Mary Warren says that the witchcraft claims are not true and that it did not happen but Abigail and the girls instead blame Mary Warren for witchcraft and everyone believes them. They were all really scared during this time and they believed all the things the girls were saying even though they were absurd. During McCarthyism the same thing happened and people were full of fear and hysteria. This took place after World War II and Americans were filled with the fear that communists would take over America and so they believed in all the events that happened because of their fear of communism. Joseph McCarthy’s claims on communism also intensified the public's concern for Communists in America and it made more people start accusing government officials. The media during this time was also not doing anything to stop the hysteria because they believed that if they stood up to McCarthy they would be accused and suspected of being a Communist and they were too scared to go through with that. We can now see that fear can do awful things to a person’s decision making skills and that people are far more likely to agree with something when they

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People were terrified of communism spreading to the United States, so when accusations started floating around everyone would believe them. McCarthy accused people of communist behavior, although many were falsely accused, no one knew better than to think they were guilty because of how scared they were of communism spreading. This resembles how certain characters were accused of witchcraft in The Crucible. The Red Scare caused nationwide hysteria just how the Salem Witch Trials caused hysteria to the people of Salem.

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McCarthy created the uproar of having a ‘witch hunt’ on communists in America. His influence on the people gave him credibility when he accused those innocent people. “He cited 81 cases that day. He skipped several numbers, and for some cases repeated the same flimsy information. He proved nothing, but the Senate called for a full investigation.”(ushistory.org).

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One parallel between McCarthyism and The Crucible is that immense power was given to those who accused others. McCarthy’s unsubstantiated claims ruined the lives of many people living in America, and the girls’ unsubstantiated accusations ruined the lives of many people living in Salem. Both McCarthy’s actions and the girls’ actions led to increased hostility and hysteria. In both instances, the accusers could accuse anyone they wished to accuse, and they did not have to show much or any evidence; their claims were unreliable and erratic. This is portrayed in Documents B and C.

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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.

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During McCarthyism Arthur Miller did not confess and he was charged with contempt of court also during McCarthyism if you were labeled a Communist you were theoretically dead to everyone else. The last way The Crucible compares to McCarthyism is both societies are scared of something completely out of hand the things that they are scared are not really going to happen. Both of these events prove that people are very gullible and believe everything they hear. In conclusion, both of these events got very out of hand due to the unreasonable fears that all societies have also Thomas Putnam and Joseph McCarthy blew all of this up because Putnam wants to take down a very powerful man in Salem and McCarthy was just power hungry. Salem Witch trials and McCarthyism were just people trying to take over by scaring people into believing in scares that were

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Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953, as a response to McCarthyism, which is, in general, accusing people of crimes with little to no proof. It ran rampant through the United States during the Second Red Scare through the early 1950s (exactly when Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible). In The Crucible, Miller juxtaposes the leaders, who rationally think for themselves, and the followers, who believe what everybody else believes, through irony, imagery, and denotation. The Crucible is riddled with irony, and Arthur Miller utilizes situational and dramatic irony to show the difference between followers and leaders.

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The Soviet Union was on the verge of a nuclear war, so McCarthy put fear in everyone because no one had any idea who was a communist and who was not. He made everyone afraid to trust people, even the friends other had. They were afraid that they would be accused

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With all of the accusations going around, people were forgetting that everyone can have their own opinion. Edward R Murrow, a television host of See It Now bashed McCarthy by saying “’We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty’” (Roberts, 2). Murrow was saying that just because a person disagrees with what the president or a government official says, does not mean they are a communist. The United States has freedom of speech, and citizens can say whatever they want about the government.

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The Crucible, written by playwright Arthur Miller, is an accurate representation of the Communist Red Scare. The play is a metaphor for McCarthyism; the act of falsely accusing without any evidence. It is written based on the Salem Witch Trials, a time during the 1600s when men and women all over Salem, Massachusetts, were being wrongly prosecuted for practicing witchcraft. In both history and the play, many innocent people were proceeded against for a crime they didn’t commit, being communist. Even though the fear of being accused of communism was widely known, and not one person would dare to commit such a crime, many guiltless individuals were charged anyway.

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The main accuser during this time was Joseph McCarthy. The people who were accused were just everyday people. Joseph McCarthy said that he knew people who are members of the communist party working for the government, he may have done this because he didn’t like those people. This scared everyone, primarily because during the years that followed WWII everyone feared communist. So after McCarthy made these statements, it almost made like a ripple effect by having everyday people, being accused of people that “suspected” that they were communists as well.

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Although, many people that were condemned weren’t actually apart of the Communist Party, (under McCarthyism around 1950-1954) they got blacklisted or lost their jobs. This social injustice is also portrayed in The Crucible as its characters face the Salem Witch Trials. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as his own reaction to the injustice of McCarthyism. Miller’s purpose was to show how people accused each other with false denunciations because of their fear, jealousy and solely hatred of one another under McCarthyism.

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The Crucible is a play by the American playwright Arthur Miller, it is a dramatized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in 1692. It uses the environmental, individual and societal conflict to represent complex ideas of religious fever fueling hysteria, but stemmed by integrity and individual greed. In The Crucible, neighbours suddenly turn on each other and accuse people they've known for years of practicing witchcraft and devil-worship. The town of Salem falls into mass hysteria, a condition in which community-wide fear overwhelms logic and individual thought leading to the conflict of the individual against the community.

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The Purpose of The Crucible The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller, which was first published in the early 1950s. The play is set in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 17th century and is based on the event that took place during the Salem witch trials. The play is an allegory for the McCarthyism era in which Arthur Miller lived. McCarthyism was a time when people were accused of being communists without any evidence.

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The crucible is a historical fiction text that is well known throughout the world and is a staple in English literature. In 1952 Arthur Miller, a popular writer in the 50s, set the stage for a dramatic act of the Salem Witch trials. Miller wrote this play not only to shed light on the tragedy that is the Salem witch trials, but also a subject that hit closer to home for him; the red scare. He wrote the essay “Why I Wrote the Crucible to educate his readers and viewers on the true purpose of the story.” Miller explains in his writing through logical historical examples, comparisons to the Red Scare and McCarthyism to the Salem Witch trials through strong illustrations of personal experiences.

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Senator Joseph McCarthy was a merciless politician who would be censured by the Senate in 1954 for his false accusations. However, his political journey throughout the country had a significant impact on the American public. Americans let fear override their conscious and allowed a bully to insert panic into their minds. McCarthy’s crusade was powerful and convinced the naive public during a time of war to question their own government without sufficient

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