Our adaptation of a scene in The Crucible by Arthur Miller is set during the Cultural Revolution in 1975 China. During this time, Mao Wanteu reasserted power by rooting capitalists; communism became the new religion. Potential communists were attacked and false allegations were made against them, resulting in jail, torture, or even execution. Similarly, in the Salem witch trials in The Crucible, women were accused of performing witchcraft by people who wanted to seek revenge or vengeance. Both time periods consist of false accusations that are made for deeper motives.…
In 1953, Arthur Miller wrote a novel called The Crucible. This book is set in 1962 and it tells the story of the infamous witch trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts. Throughout this whole story we find that greed, revenge, and hysteria affected much of what happened in Salem. From Abigail Williams's lust for John Proctor, to the hysteria throughout the trials, and to Abigail's accusation on Tituba; greed, revenge, and hysteria was shown rampant in Salem during these times. I believe that greed, revenge, and hysteria presented in the book, destroyed the town and the people of Salem, Massachusetts. This book really shows how slight misconceptions of innocent individuals can create uterpandimony. Many people who were thought to be Godly…
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 allegory of Arthur Miller and McCarthyism began when Miller wrote The Crucible which shows the similarities between the Salem witch trials and the Red Scare. The fear of the the crucible still in some people as it did in the fifties “the play seems to be about the dilemma of relying on the testimony of small children accusing adults of sexual abuse, something I'd not have dreamed of forty years ago.” Arthur Miller once stated “The…
To start off, the fear and paranoia of world destruction that existed in the McCarthy Era, was also clearly present in The Crucible with its deeply religious nature. American society during the McCarthy Era had a great fear of the Communists because they believed that the Communists wanted nuclear war, which meant the destruction of America and the rest of the world. On the other hand, communists did not yet exist in the time period that The Crucible took place in. Instead, the deeply religious nature of the theocratic town of Salem is what Miller used to portray the same amount of fear as present in the McCarthy Era. Given their religiousness, the town’s residents took everything the bible had to say as the be-all and end-all truth. They…
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…
In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, women are portrayed as both powerful and weak at once. The author shows that during that time women had no rights and were inferior to men. However character such as Abigail presented her dominance over other girls which were included in the “witchcraft” action. The plate doesn’t make any specific statement about the gender roles by showing multiple sides of women and the variety of their dimensions as human being.…
Those involved in the McCarthy witch hunts and those in The Crucible are mainly motivated to condemn others for personal gain or out of sheer panic and hysteria. Many--if they did not share views of the general population--are openly condemned in both the McCarthy era and in “The Crucible.” In both instances, regardless of the amount of evidence present, people were suspected of witchcraft/communism and consequently condemned. The many claims of witchcraft made by characters in Miller’s “The Crucible”--lacking sufficient evidence--share great similarities with the communist “witch hunts” of the McCarthy…
In 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, the superstition of witches existed in a society based on strong Christian beliefs. Anyone who acts out of the ordinary is accused of being a witch, and he/she will actually be forgiven if they blame their accusations on another individual, or confess themselves as guilty. Hysteria is the main idea of this play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Miller shows how it can destroy an entire community, and developed a theme of how suspicion and panic can lead to extensive hysteria that often can destroy rationality and public/individual persona.…
In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, various people had been accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. This leads to a hysteria of fear of the devil and witches. Hysteria is often an outcome of jealousy, revenge, and greed. The characters in the play all contributes to the paranoia occurring in the town.…
In 'The Crucible', Acts Three and Four, Arthur Miller has demonstrated female roles and dominance through the use of the themes: prejudice, paranoia and power. Moreover, Miller also utilises poetic and language devices to express the female roles in the times of the Salem witch-hunts and trials in the 1600s, as well as the ‘McCarthyist’ era in the 1950s. Firstly, Act Three leads on and constructs female dominance as a follow on from Act Two, the playwright than ‘morphs’ female dominance into female submission as the play enters into Act Four. In Act Three, ‘Abigail’ is the most dominative figure in the text, she also represents Senator McCarthy through demonstrating his powerful influence and involvement with the HUAC trials as ‘Abigail’ does…
Our fatal flaw often brings out the worst in us. The Salem Witch Trials, one of the most influential events in American history. The trials took place in 1692, Salem, Massachusetts. Historically twenty became executed as a result of “witchcraft”. The Crucible, a play written in 1953 about the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, Salem, Massachusetts and the townspeople are contemplating what to do with the prospect of witchcraft running amok in the town. Arthur Miller wrote this play as an allegory to Mccarthyism and the Red Scare, in the same sense that people are frightened by new concepts coming into their town and destroying life as the know it. Envy, we all will have a desire at one point in time; whether or not we let it consume us is another…
Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, is an act of desperation and fear to criticize the defamation of early Salem, his generation, and future generations to come. Miller argues how his play is to show everyone how fear bends one’s morals; “Much of my desperation branched...from a typical Depression...the blow struck on the mind by the rise of power European Fascism and the brutal anti-semitism it had brought to power” (Miller). He provides examples of “the hunts for Reds in America”, referring to hunts for communist, and the extermination of Jews in Germany. The hunt for witches was an act of fear and greed, in the early 1600s in Salem-to deflect accusations on others, gain land, or revenge on a neighbor. Miller also goes into depth with his…
In the Crucible, by Arthur Miller, men and women each hold powerful and important parts. Men hold mainly all of the power because they decide those who are sentenced to death. They are the ones who are in control of the village and lastly they all try to dominate over each other.…