Preview

The Cold War In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
453 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Cold War In The Crucible By Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller produced a play known as “The Crucible” which was performed on January 22, 1953. The play betrayed communists as being stereotyped and categorized. The content in the production created and analogy to the historical event in 1945 known as the The Cold War (pbs). Accordingly, Arthur Miller wrote the drama play reflecting on culture and political hysteria. The United States government sought to suppress communism and racial activity. To create his play, he traced With McCarthyism to Salem, Massachusetts to do research on the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692. He used the event to make and allegory for his play ( pbs.org).

The Salem Witch Trials happen in January of 1962. It involved eight young girls who ages ranged from nine to eleven years old. After they all become mysteriously sick with no diagnosis to being put into place, villagers come to the conclusion that they must be under a spell that has delirious effects. The main question was “ who put such a powerful spell upon them?“ with no one outside of their community to blame they turn to their own people. However, the first person who was to blame was a foreign slave from by the name of Tituba. Tituba was arrested along with two elderly suspects named Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn. Once in custody the communist was considered as “witches” along with 150 others. They’re consequences were either to be
…show more content…
The war was a geopolitical tension between the Eastern and Western B.B.C. that happen after World War ll (Wikipedia). The United Stated and the Soviet Union went to war with the U.S. coming out with the victory. After the war had ended the Soviet Union faced rejection. People who advocated the class war, better know as communist, invaded the U.S. . People looked at them as a threat because of their alliance with the Union. The communist was also referred to as the “Red Scare from the Union’s flag being red ( U.S.History

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    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.…

    • 83 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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.…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    1. The two Red Scares The Red Scare refers to two distinctions of anti-Communism sentiment in the US, it resulted from the fear of spreading communism during the early and middle 20th century. The First Red Scare occurred during 1919-1920, the Second Red Scare lasted for decades after World War II. According to Fitzpatrick (2009), during the World War I period, the US Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and Rising Justice Department star J. Edgar Hoover began to take on a “red menace” to radicals, anarchists and Bolsheviks, and by 1920, they had arrested up to 10,000 alleged subversives. The American fears of the Communist world seemed to be endless in the 20s century, the tensions between the two main powers also kept highly tight all the way. When time went to the post-WWII era, a newly hysteric period came together. With the reorganization of Western power and through various issues like Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, the Korean War, HUAC and McCarthyism, the post-war world more seemed like an peaceful underway battle, between the two super powers: the United States and the Soviet Union. After the Cold War time, scholars’ opinions on the Cold War and general Red Scare had changed a lot, which can be roughly divided into 3 different stages. At the offset scholars tended to believe that America’s involvement in the armament competition and conflict was imposed by Communist pressure generated by Soviet Union and other Communist force in the world. In the middle stage, scholars began to change their mind and to believe that all the things the US did is to display its power other than anything else. When stepping into the 1990s and 21th century, academic views became more rational to rethink that the Red Scare and Cold War could not only be owed to each of the US or SU, it’s more complicated than what people thought before, both of them were to some extent drifted into the Cold War under a large scale international diplomatic…

    • 2098 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    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.…

    • 613 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Crucible is a 1952 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as a narrative to McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists. The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693. Even though The Crucible is based on the Salem witch trials, they have differences such as, the relationship between John Proctor and Abigail Williams, and the towns’ relationship with the Putnam’s.…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Throughout history there have been many events that are direct parallels of each other. These parallels are evident in Joseph McCarthy’s, McCarthyism and in Arthur Miller’s, the Crucible. McCarthyism was the fear of communism that was created by the Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. This was a time of fear after the Second World War in the years 1950 through 1954. McCarthy had conducted hearings accusing people who were suspected of being related to communism. During these hearings, he forced people to give up names of other “followers” and if they refused to give names of others, they were imprisoned. In Arthur Miller’s, the Crucible it was a based…

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953. He wrote it because he wanted to get his message across. In the 1950’s Arthur Miller was summoned by the House of Committee on un-american activities. He was accused of being a communist. Miller was trying to get his message that the society has turned into a hypocritical society. During the 1950’s the U.S senator John McCarthy was accusing everyone who would be a threat as a communist. Since Arthur Miller was a political advocate who was against the inequalities of race in America and his vocal support of labor and the unions made him a target to John McCarthy. His basic need to respond to a phenomenon which, with only small exaggeration, one could say paralysed a whole generation and in short time dried up the habits of trust and toleration in public discourse. Arthur Miller admitted that The…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Core 1 - The Crucible

    • 853 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The novel, The Crucible was written in 1953 by Arthur Miller, which was based on the Salem Witch Trials existing in the late 1600s. In the play, Abigail and several other young women accuse innocent citizens of Salem for the action of witchcraft. During the trials, many individuals were unfairly persecuted; such as John Proctor. This event in history may be associated with the Red Scare, in which individuals were tried for their questionable influences of communism in the United States. When Miller compares the character of John Proctor to himself, the reader is able to relate the similar experiences that both men faced. The Crucible demonstrates the struggle against corruption involving the court, which lead to the death of many innocent individuals in Salem. The Crucible generates an allegory for Arthur Miller’s struggles with McCarthyism because of his similar experience relating to John Proctor’s battle against the Salem Witch Trials, and the relation between the actions of the court in both situations.…

    • 853 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Red Scare Research Paper

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Red Scare is the term given to the spread of communism that infiltrated the US government. But communists in America were the strange new kids on the block that nobody thought was going to gain popularity in the political…

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Arthur MIller wrote “The Crucible” at a time in American history where people were in a hysteria about communism and “secret communists” in the Country, Communities,…

    • 145 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In America, Senator Joseph McCarthy made public a list of over 200 people who were accused of infiltrating the government and who showed communistic actions. McCarthy’s “zealous campaigning ushered in one of the most repressive times in the 20th century American politics” (McCarthyism 1). Those accused were mainly writers and entertainers who then suffered many consequences from the public's paranoia. Arthur Miller, one of the 320 artists accused and blacklisted of communism, went on to write The Crucible. This work traced back to the hunt of communism due to McCarthyism in 1953. Miller described, “we were living in an art form, a metaphor that had suddenly, incredibly, gripped the nation” (The Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism 2). Eventually, those against Joseph McCarthy’s actions were powerful enough to remove him from office in 1954. The idea of McCarthyism still haunts the United States government and society…

    • 812 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Salem Witch trails took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. It was a time where reason and facts become cloudy by unreasonable desires to place the blame for society’s problems on others. Many innocent men and women were convicted of witchcraft, and were sent to be hanged. Others spent many months in jail waiting for trial. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller illustrates the power of false confession and effect of fear in Salem proving that mankind will say anything to save their own life, when their life is in danger.…

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller in 1953. The Crucible is about a group of girls who practice witchcraft and then accuse innocent people of being witches in order to avoid consequences. Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953 during the McCarthy period when many Americans were accused for having Pro-Communist beliefs. The Crucible draws many parallels between the witch-hunts of the 1690s and the McCarthy trials of the 1950s…

    • 1478 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953, just when the Second World War had ended. But still there was a battle between the capitalists and the communists. Arthur Miller wrote this book because of the incidents that occurred during the 1950’s. Senator Joseph McCarthy had a feeling of communism in the United States. So he starts a witch hunt to find the communists in the United States and he targeted celebrities of Hollywood such as Helen Keller, Langston Hughes and Charlie Chaplin put them all on trial for been associated with the Communist Party. This also parallels into Arthur Miller’s Crucible where people were put on trial based on supernatural evidence such as the Red Scare when McCarthy accused people with little to no real evidence.…

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a play that takes place in 1692 in the small Massachusetts village of Salem. Salem is a Puritan community; they are a very restrictive society with strong beliefs. They believe in hard work and prayer, therefore they consider material and sexual desires unnatural and evil. Abigail Williams, the main character is the reason for the witch trials that begin in Salem. She is dishonest, manipulative and her seductive ways is what makes her the antagonist of this play.…

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays