In a way, McCarthyism is similar to the play, The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller. Although the actions taken against suspected communists were not as strict as those during the Salem witch trials, they were still vicious and shattered many reputations of well-liked men and women. This also occurred during 1692 and 1693, the years of the witch trials. There were many differences and similarities between these two topics. The death penalty was the number one difference, along with the after effects of these events and their logic during the time of the occurrences. The similarities were greed and self-preservation. It also gave many an excuse to act on personal grudges bore with one another.…
In the early 1950’s after world war II McCarthyism was a huge problem all over the country. As a result an author by the name of Arthur Miller wrote a play about the Salem witch trials as an indirect commentary on the injustice of the McCarthy trials. Arthur Miller drew parallels between both unjust trials by showing how people could falsely accuse one another with little to no evidence while still keeping it more indirect by separating out religion as opposed to communism.…
Many tragic events in the history of our country have parallels with other tragic events. When an important event does happen in our county, writers find fuel for their writing in the details of the event. There are many similarities between the McCarthy Era and the play written by Arthur Miller, The Crucible.…
McCarthyism and The Crucible contain many similarities and differences in their oppression and accusation of people who are distinguish as criminals of their cultural. Both of these events have similarities is by displeasure. During the Salem Witch Trials, Abby abhor Elizabeth Proctor and the wife of the man that he loves, which concomitant Abby inculcate Elizabeth of practicing witchcraft and interact with the devil. In McCarthyism, rage is shown when Joseph McCarthy arraign people being communists. Anyone who reveal their freedom of speech was labeled a communist just because people inculcate them being one.…
characters to exploit other people in the book. This is demonstrated in a story based off the Salem Witch Trials and a major problem in the McCarthy Era. Arthur Miller was living through this McCarthy Era where people were accused for being communists yet there was none. He wrote The Crucible based off the that. Mass hysteria is used within the story by Abigail, Hale, and Mary Warren to exploit the people around them.…
Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ is based upon the Salem Witch Trials which occurred in the year 1692. The text also serves as an allegorical warning about much more recent events, in particular the McCarthy Trials of 1953. The McCarthy Trials were exploring communism. ‘The Crucible’ was written to highlight the similarities between McCarthyism and communism in the 1950’s in the United States of America and the witch hunts of Europe in the 17th century. The play is literally written about the witch trials but it is figuratively about the society Miller lived in, in 1953. Thousands of Americans were accused of being communists like in ‘The Crucible’; hundreds of the town’s people were accused of being witches. Three major ideologies that are still relevant in society today are evident in the play, intolerance, mass hysteria and reputation.…
Between February 1692 and May 1693, in several towns in the state of Massachusetts, dozens of people were accused of witchcraft. Nineteen people were sentenced to death by the state government because of all the villagers that accused each other of being possessed by the devil. In contemporary times, these events are generally known as the Salem witch trials. A few hundred years later, in the early 1950’s, author Arthur Miller wrote a play about this part of American history called The Crucible. In this analysis I will argue that The Crucible, a play with hysteria and paranoia as main themes, partly represents the McCarthy Era, in which hundreds of United States inhabitants were accused of being communistic without hard evidence.…
‘The Crucible’ is a novel which was written by Arthur Miller in 1953. It takes place during the times of the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts. This was a time of much hypocrisy in the people of the town of Salem. Many people believed anything they heard or saw. Although The Crucible is fictitious, the story depicts the historical information of the Salem witch trials, and blends them with fictitious characters to create a very realistic plot and conflict in the story. Miller wrote this play as a response to the political environment in which he lived. The story relates to the McCarthy trials. During the 1950's Senator Joseph McCarthy accused many American leaders of being communists. This lead to many accusations that people were communists. Some people believed him because they had fear of communism. McCarthy was, in effect, conducting "witch hunts". The Red Scare was a witch hunt where the US government was searching for "dangerous communists." Accusations came from left and right, much the same as the characters did for "real witches" in The Crucible. This meant that people were forced to either confess to the crime of witchery or shove the blame towards a different person. As an effect of this bias, the accused were never discharged, but were given the opportunity to confess to the crime of witchcraft to lessen their sentence. With the red scare, the accused were given a chance to give up names of other suspected communists to lessen their sentence as well. In both situations, there were people who confessed even though they had no relation to the crime at all. The majority, however, valued their morals and refused to give into political pressure by lying. This is shown as abuse of power. The puritans were a group of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th century. The entire plot of the novel is moulded by the repressive Puritan society. Like many puritan women, Elizabeth Proctor is dutiful and loves her husband dearly. Yet, Elizabeth is hurt by the fact…
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953, as his take upon a series of radical trials in a time known as McCarthyism. Following World War II, while United States military forces left, Russian soldiers stayed in Europe. Many broken countries were “adopted” into a Union with Soviet Russia and the spread of communism was alarming to politically opposed America. In 1950, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy made a significant speech in which he spoke out against communism in which he had named over 200 individuals whom seemed loyal to the Communist Party. After noticing Americans were beginning to become frightened of an outbreak of communism in the United States, McCarthy was made chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate, which gave him the opportunity to investigate the possibility of government infiltration of Soviet ideals.…
You ask me what parallels there are between the play The Crucible and the event The McCarthy Era. There were many parallels throughout the whole play. In this play everyone was blamed for no reason at all and all everyone one did was make excuses to try and not get their own selves in trouble. They were always wondering why everyone was getting tricked into believing that witches existed and it was because they were all just trying to get themselves out of trouble. Arthur Miller shows the audience that people have not moved on that much from when people were believing in the Salem witch trials. All through this play, Miller used the trails in The Crucible and the McCarthy Era because he realized that the events were the same. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible to help everyone today, who wasn’t alive back then, notice that they were not going crazy they were just trying to keep themselves alive and just they were believing everything they heard.…
In "The Crucible", written by Arthur Miller, religious freedom and justice of the law are the main controversial aspects that are not enforced in this play. The Crucible is a play in which Arthur Miller writes about the tendentious, hysterical event of the Salem witch trials that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts during 1692. Miller writes "The Crucible" to show how inequitable and unjust the law can be in a time of fear and tension of the masses. In the play, inferior and subordinate people were accusing innocent citizens of witchcraft for revenge or land. The hysteria and fear in this time of the Salem witch trials influenced the law to become less dependable and accurate when Salem did not adhere to the basic American fundamentals of religious freedom and "innocent until proven guilty." Arthur Miller creates this play to show that we still as modern America are hurt by…
At the time when “The Crucible” was written, the United States and Russia were going through the Red Scare which was a major influence when Miller was writing this play. Miller’s tactic in writing this play was to remind people of how the hysteria of the witch hunts could be dangerously similar to the communist hunts going on in the United States at the time. Using the history from the Salem Witch Trials, he wrote a story that was sure to educate people about the potential disaster that could come from the carelessness of accusing others.…
McCarthyism is defined as the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism." This was used in the Cold War by U.S. Senator McCarthy to try and eliminate communists in the United States. It was used with little evidence, and it was in itself a witch hunt like those described in “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller was inspired directly by McCarthyism when he was writing The Crucible. The many claims of witchcraft made by characters in The Crucible--lacking sufficient evidence--share great similarities with the “witch hunts” of the McCarthy Era.…
In today's world, there are many ridiculous happenings that people blow out of proportion. Everything as frivolous as celebrities from anything as serious as 9/11 many go overboard in any given situations. Like in the play The Crucible written by Arthur Miller which is a comparison the ridiculous social paranoia of the McCarthy period in the 50’s and the salem witch trials. The play written by Arthur Miller shows how many has not changed from century to century. That there is many similarities from how people use to act to how we act now. Many of the same situations happened to both eras. Arthur miller wrote the crucible as a parallel to the communist scares in America; Both of which, had witches and communist trails which contained, loaded questions, personal power agendas, Or placing pressure on the accused to name others.…
In American History there were two proceedings that were very similar, yet three hundred years apart. The Salem Witch Trials took place in 1692, the seventeenth century and McCarthyism took place in 1948 between 1956, the mid twentieth century. These two proceedings are known as two of the greatest mass tragedies in America. The Crucible is an allegory of McCarthyism or in other words the second Red Scare. During McCarthyism the United States was petrified of Communists influence. Many people in both the Crucible and McCarthyism who feared the court provided names of suspects in an attempt to save themselves.…