Puritan Intolerance In Arthur Miller's The Crucible

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a tragic play set in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, where Miller uses the Salem Trials as a metaphor for the 1950s McCarthy hearings. In Salem, people value their good names. The Puritan community acts as a theocracy in which there appears to be no right to privacy, and people must conform to a strict moral code. The theme of reputation, lying, and deceit are shown in Abigail, John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, Mary Warren, and other characters. In the play’s dialogue, Miller uses Biblical allusions, situational irony, and dramatic irony to develop these themes.

The horrors of history are passed on from generation to generation in hopes that they will never occur again. People look back on these times and are appalled at how horrendous the times were; yet, in the 1950s, history repeated itself. During this time, Joseph McCarthy, a United States senator from Wisconsin, began accusing people of being communists or communist sympathizers, which is parallel to the Salem witch trials in the late 1690s when innocent people were accused of practicing witchcraft. One of the people McCarthy accused was author and playwright Arthur Miller. To express his outrage at McCarthy’s actions, miller wrote The Crucible, intentionally drawing similarities between the McCarthy hearings and the Salem witch trials.

In The Crucible, the theocratic Christian society where God and the law are the same, the faith of the Salem community becomes flawed and twisted as Religion is taken advantage of to serve private interests, ultimately poisoning society. This worldly abuse of Religion can be seen when members of Salem twist their faith to secure their reputation, grapple for political power, and carry out personal vengeances.

The Crucible is the fictional story of the Salem witch trials in which many women were accused of being witches. The Crucible is written by Arthur Miller, who was recorded as the greatest American playwright (“Arthur Miller” 1). The scene for the play is based in the Massachusetts Bay Colony around 1692. McCarthyism was the act of accusing people of treason without evidence, attacks on a person's character, and attack on their patriotism by accusing many Americans of being communist (Ortega). Lisa Martin says, “Communists control led the two world superpowers, China and the Soviet Union Americans feared a takeover in their own country” (Martin 1). Many people tried to accuse the men and women who were spreading the fear. One man named Joseph McCarthy was a senator that charged communists that interfered with the U.S. State Department (“Joseph McCarthy” 1). The accusations lead to investigations, questioning and finding people guilty without evidence,

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. Arthur Miller uses several writing methods in order to convey The Crucible as an allegory for his struggles with McCarthyism. Miller demonstrates how the Crucible represents an allegory for his conflict with McCarthyism by relating his experiences with the plot of the novel. Miller relates the novel to his struggles by stating, “Should the accused confess, his honesty could only be proved by naming former confederates.” (Are You Now… 34) Miller is explaining how the court

A quote by Edward R. Murrow states, “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” During the Red Scare, Senator McCarthy did terrorize a whole nation, and Arthur Miller became a victim of McCarthyism. Miller suffered through accusations of possibly believing in communism; as a result, he wrote a play called The Crucible, in which he used the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 to explain the communist hysteria during the 1950s. Arthur Miller develops an allegory in The Crucible by comparing the Salem Witch Trials to McCarthyism by using ringleaders, persecuted couples, and hypocrisy in the government or legal system.

The play “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller was written in response to McCarthyism in the 1950’s. In 1692 and 1693 the Salem witch trials took place in Salem Massachusetts. Girls believed to be involved in witchcraft were responsible for these trials. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s senator McCarthy came to office. Senator McCarthy and some of his allies were responsible for hysteria in the United States of America in the 1950’s. The scare was also in result of a communist scare after World War II and leading to the cold war. The behavior of the people of the Salem witch trials and Americans in the 19050’s resulted in a big scare in reaction to hysteria.

The Puritans were one of the first Europeans who settled in the North America. These settlers were influenced heavily by the church and Christian beliefs. Through “The Crucible” written by Arthur Miller, the readers could see how the Puritans reveal their strict beliefs in their lifestyle. Among those beliefs, the idea of unforgiven sins and the presence of the Devil in the community negatively affected the Puritans that caused the massacre at the Salem Village, Massachusetts in 1692.

At first glance, the playwright Arthur Miller in The Crucible highlights the historical significance of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, but in fact it is an allegorical expression of his perception of McCarthyism. If the reader has some background information on Arthur Miller’s victimization as a communist, it is evident that the play is a didactic vessel illustrating the flaws of the court system in the 1950’s. The communist allegations were launched at government employees, entertainers and writers, without the proper regard for evidence. In order to alert the media and the citizens in the United States of the Red Scare, and its injustice, Miller writes The Crucible. His play serves as mirror image of the way the government in 1950

In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, he strongly outlines Puritanism and its effects on the village of Salem. The intensity of the Puritanism religion lead to an overwhelming sense of suspicion and paranoia coupled with personal issues in the tightknit community. It can easily be concluded that the witch trials started and quickly escalated due to the issues that branch off of Puritanism.. The most paramount of the effects from Puritanism include hysterical fear, personal grudges, and the struggle of upholding reputations.

Deputy Governor Danforth is a selfish, arrogant, and corrupt man who only cares about his own goods. His flawed personalities and hypocritical attitudes make him blind and irrational throughout the entire witchcraft, which directly causes the calamity of the town. Danforth feels embarrassing and doesn’t know what to do when Proctor brings Mary Warren’s deposition that shows his previous judgments are wrong. He is baffled and find a reason to defend himself, “ there lurks nowhere in your heart, nor hidden in your spirit, any desire to undermine this court? Are you in all respects a Gospel Christian? Not come to Church?”(94). Instead of taking a closer look at the details and the evidence of the case, he chooses to question Proctor’s credibility, and he believes people who confound his theory are challenging his authority and he will never let that happen. Furthermore, Danforth is somewhat terrified and worried

As famously written by George Orwell, “Big Brother is watching you.” In the eyes of the Puritans, God is the “Big Brother” watching over them in their mission to become the “city upon a hill.” They devote themselves to pleasing Him, eventually becoming obsessed with their status as the paragon of a Puritan society. However, as their ideologies become increasingly restrictive, their intolerance of misconduct also consolidates, and their utmost faithfulness ultimately leads to their untimely destruction. While John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, delivers “A Model of Christian Charity,” laying out the societal expectations of Puritans, Jonathan Edwards in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” aggressively warns the Puritans of the wrath of God, and Arthur Miller denounces their flawed ideology and the paranoia it induces in The Crucible. In 1692, the small, quaint town of Salem Village is in absolute mayhem when a group of young girls claim there is evil amongst them. Due to their intolerance of imperfections in their community, Puritans mark the beginning of the Salem witch trials and their doom. Despite their original objective to create a utopian society based purely on faithfulness, the Puritans’ unquenchable thirst for protecting their reputation creates a domino effect of events provoking their downfall.

The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller in 1953, is a fictional story based on historical facts of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Originally a hit Broadway play, The Crucible was later adapted into film format. Miller’s inspiration for The Crucible came from a brief anti-Communist movement led by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin during the Cold War in the 1950s. During this time, the American government conducted their own version of a “witch hunt” by illegally investigating American citizens suspected of being Soviet sympathizers. Miller was inspired to write The Crucible after his own arrest and after being one of many to be blacklisted in Hollywood. Arthur Miller metaphorically compares the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials to the very

McCarthyism is well-known and embraced by Arthur Miller. His 1953 play on the Salem witch trials act as an allegory to Joseph McCarthy’s scandal, comparing them to a “witch hunt”, thus an allusion to the Salem tragedies. Miller uses his characters in a strict way to develop his allegory of the Puritan intolerance. Strongly implanted by Miller, his theme of intolerance demonstrates what thoughts spring to life and what he is trying to put forth. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Miller uses his characters of Deputy Governor Danforth, Abigail Williams, and Marry Warren to construct his overall theme of intolerance and thus does so substantially, proving his theory that a witch hunt provides nothing in which good comes out of it.

Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as an allegory for McCarthyism in the late 1950’s when he was falsely accused of being a communist. This quote shows that the accusations made by Joseph McCarthy lacked evidence and were entirely false. McCarthyism is a term describing a period of intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States around the 1950’s. An allegory is a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically being either moral or political. The Crucible is about the Salem witch trials. Several young girls claim to afflicted by witchcraft, starting with Reverend Parris’ daughter Betty. The afflicted girls accuse people in town of witchcraft, often people who they dislike. The Crucible is an allegory for McCarthyism because of the way McCarthyism and the events of The Crucible were carried out and the similarities between the book and McCarthyism.