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The Salem Witches And Mccarthyism In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

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The Salem witches and McCarthyism are two of the most shameful moments in modern U.S. history. A great play writer named Arthur Miller decided to make a statement about McCarthyism and Salem Witch Trials; he did this through an impactful play called the Crucible. McCarthyism, named after Joseph McCarthy, was a time where actors, writer, and poets had accusations of being Communist. If you were accused of being Communist, you were called before the court. If denied these accusations you were blacklisted. When you are blacklisted this meant for many that their promising careers would terminate. The Crucible is a story about a town accusing people of being witches if you were found to be a “witch” you were hang. After learning about McCarthyism, it is apparent that people had many ulterior motives for their actions, also conflicts and groups of people become apparent. McCarthyism shed light to my eyes that there was more to Salem. Many people had ulterior motives their motives profited themselves. During McCarthyism many people had a reason not to sacrifice their career, so they accused others of communists. They did this to protect themselves. “ The FBI had long since infiltrated the Party, …show more content…

During McCarthyism there was a committee called (HUAC) House Un-American Activities Committee that was hunting for “infiltrators” card-carrying communist . They decided that if you were suggested of being a communist you would have to face trial. This committee had the power to blacklist you and destroy your career. “...three hundred and twenty artists were blacklisted, and for many of them this meant the end of exceptional and promising careers.”(McCarthyism 217) The court in the Crucible also had tremendous power, their power was life or death. If you were accused and found to be a witch according to the court you were hang. “Hang them over the town!”(Miller

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The times back then were terrible. The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller in 1953 about The Salem Witch Trials of 1692.McCarthyism was the “witch hunt” for the communist in 1953.the parallels between The Crucible and McCarthyism are naming names,lack of proof ,and reststance. The first reason they are parallel is because of naming names. Hollywood director Elia Kazan went in front of the HUAC twice. The first time he did not confess and names.

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Almost every kid in school has read a passage or a story, and never really understood the purpose of learning the topic in school. The teachers expect us to do the work, and hopefully understand it, but we never truly understand why we learned such a topic or event. The Crucible is a prime example on what students read in school, or why we’re obligated to read the book. The crucible and McCarthyism have many similarities that many people over look, and don’t realize, and connects more than we perceive. Books like the crucible and McCarthy are historical events, many schools have very few books based on historical events, which is why teachers spend more time on them.

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"When the accused invoked the Fifth Amendment to protect themselves, McCarthy said this act is "the most positive proof obtainable that the witness is Communist." This shows that as well people we're afraid of being caught in that time and they used their fifth amendment so they did not have to

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The McCarthy hearings and the Salem witch trials accurately represent the saying, "Desperate times call for desperate measures. " In the 1950s, the McCarthy hearings tainted lives by falsely accusing those in the film industry of being associated with Communism. In the 17th century, the Salem witch trials charged innocent villagers of practicing witchcraft. Victims from the McCarthy hearings were isolated and ruined, while victims from the Salem trials were hanged and shunned.

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Also, since The Crucible was written to be parallel to McCarthyism, the same idea is shown. The same situation can be seen in The Crucible as Arthur Miller was influenced by the events that occurred during McCarthyism. In the Crucible, anyone whose name that had been mentioned underwent an investigation and was asked to prove that they were not partaking in witchcraft. Because this task was impossible, the court made rash decisions such as sending people to jail or sentencing them to be hanged. This scenario is seen in the crucible when Rebecca Nurse is accused.

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McCarthyism was a vociferous campaign against alleged communists in the US government. Many of the accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs, although most did not in fact belong to the Communist Party. In these two events, many similarities

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However, during the time of McCarthyism, people suddenly believed if a person went against the government thoughts, they were a communist. Similarly, this is like a time in The Crucible when a mass amount of women were arrested for witchcraft. After Mary Warren comes home from watching the witchcraft trials, John Proctors asks if it is true if only fourteen women arrested. Instead Mary Warren replies, “No, sir. There be thirty-nine now” (Miller, Act II).

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In the crucible many of the girls let fear kind of control them and what they did and spoke. To go along with that, the red scare did almost the exact same thing but for all people who would have feared being accused of communism. From ipl.org again, “The Salem witch trials and McCarthyism have an uncanny relation to one another. In Salem people were afraid of not appearing Christian enough, meanwhile during the 50’s Americans feared of being accused of communist.” This just explains how much alike the Salem witch trials are to the red scare through fear.

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McCarthyism and Arthur Miller's “The Crucible” share many similar qualities regarding the actions of society when aroused with a certain fear. It was distinctly seen first in the 1600s during the Salem Witch Trials, which is portrayed through the play, “The Crucible”. It happened when talk of witchcraft scattered the town of Salem, making everyone hysterical and constantly accusing people of being witches without proof. Behavior similar to this came back in the mid 1900s when society was accusing people of being communist during a time of fearing Hitler. The claims of supposed communists were involved in the idea of McCarthyism.

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In order to convict someone of being a Communist back in the 1950’s all that was needed was an accuser to speak out against that person and claim they saw them at a Communist meeting and then the prosecution would only intensify and then, even without solid evidence, that person would be jailed, added to the blacklist, or deported. Also, there was not any real evidence that the Communists were doing anything bad to the society in America. As exhibited after mail bombs were sent to executives, people instantly blamed Communists without any sufficient evidence implicating them. A key accuser during the Red Scare was Joseph McCarthy, “The climax of the McCarthy era was a series of televised hearings in 1954 about the supposed communist infiltration in the U.S. Army. The accusations against the army were made by McCarthy after military officials rejected Cohn's request that the army grant special privileges to G. David Schine, a member of McCarthy's staff who was drafted in November 1953.

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The Salem witch trials proved to be one of the most cruel and fear driven events to ever occur in history. Many innocent people were accused of witchcraft, and while some got out of the situation alive not everyone was as lucky. Arthur Miller the author of The Crucible conveys this horrific event in his book and demonstrates what fear can lead people to do. But the reason as to why Arthur Miller felt the need to write The Crucible in the first place was because the unfortunate reality that history seemed to have repeated itself again. In the article “Are You Now or Were You Ever”, Arthur Miller claims that the McCarthy era and the Salem witch trials were similar and he does this through his choice of diction, figurative language, and rhetorical questions.

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“The Crucible” is a play about the unfortunate Salem Witch Trials but if one dug deeper, the events of “The Crucible” closely relate to the events of McCarthyism in the 1950’s. The people during the 1950’s were very distraught and constantly looking over their shoulders in fear in search of Communists because they were a national and social threat to the Democratic Republic. People were turning their backs on their moral and personal values to point out yet another victim to the Communist chase. The US authoritative figures conjured a hysterical fear of their government collapsing and the people losing their rights which turned them into hypocritical pursuants. Arthur Miller targets these points in “The Crucible” with his knowledge of the Salem

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Arthur Miller constructs his play upon the famous Salem witch trails. Miller's Crucible was written in the early 1950s. Miller wrote his drama during the brief reign of the American senator Joseph McCarthy whose bitter criticized anti- communism sparkled the need for the United States to be a dramatic anti- communist society during the early tense years of the cold war. By orders from McCarthy himself, committees of the Congress commenced highly controversial investigations against communists in the U.S similar to the alleged Salem witches situation. Convict communists were ordered to confess their crime and name others to avoid the retribution.

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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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We’re hunting Communists” the government is chasing after Communist but hurting people in the meantime. In “Half Hanged Mary” the town hangs a woman called by Mary Webster for witchcraft. “Under stress, a society will always scapegoat a person or a group of people” in hopes to get rid of a huge issue at stake, not thinking of the damages of the people not associated with the problem. A presentable text to justify this statement is The Crucible by Arthur Miller. In this story a small village in Salem, Massachusetts has a scare of witchcraft.

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