Individualism In The Crucible

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.

The theocratic town of Salem, in the late 1600s, not only advocated conformity but stifled individuality. The play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, illustrates the conflict between conformity and individuality. Salem, a town dependent on the unity and participation, understandably teaches people from a young age to recognize the needs of the community as greater than the needs of an individual. As any unit needs something to hold it all together, Salem forces unity and social conformity through religion. Coincidentally, religion in Salem acts as the judicial system as well, making it particularly hard for individuals to rebel against the practices of the church. Therefor all

This event is similar to the actions of President Truman in the Second Red Scare. Truman believed that the government was not being infiltrated by Communists, but as fear and paranoia set in within the United States, he compromised his ideals to remain in power and in favor of the people, “At first, [Truman] was outraged at the allegation of widespread Communist infiltration of the government and called the charge of ‘coddling Communists’ a red herring dragged in by the Republicans to bring down the Democrats. But such was the gathering power of raw belief in the great Soviet plot that Truman soon felt it necessary to institute loyalty boards of his own” (“Why I Wrote The Crucible”). Through this parallel, Miller is highlighting the theme of the The Crucible which is the private integrity vs public reputation. Both men gave up their private integrities to uphold their public reputation in fear of the people they governed. This then leads to the fear and mob mentality that is present in both Salem and the McCarthy Era.

Arthur Miller is the author of The Crucible, a play about the Salem Witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. This brilliant play served as an allegory for The Red Scare, an American crisis in the 1950’s that caused everyone and their neighbor to be accused of being a communist. These two events served as perfect allegories for each other due to their striking similarities. Both events caused mass hysteria and fear among the public, had people who doubted the validity of the accusations, and caused physical and emotional pain and suffering for those involved.

The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller as a comparison to the great red scare of the 1920s. It had a dramatic effect on the entertainment industry and even Arthur himself. The events of the 1680s and 1690s witch accusations were very similar to the Red Scare communist ones of the 1920s. Communism is a form of government where all economic and social activity is controlled by a dominating and perpetual party. Joseph McCarthy of the U.S senate accused Dean Acheson of the U.S secretary of state of being a communist and that he knew that there were 57 other communists in the department.

A prominent fear of communism and the Soviet Union was infesting the minds of millions of Americans in the 1950s, this was phenomenon was called the Red Scare and lead to the prosecution of some of the public officials in the United States of America by Joseph McCarthy. The Red Scare was also the reasoning behind the creation of The Crucible as its purpose was to relate the absurdness of the Salem witch trials to that of the Red Scare. The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller, an American playwright in the year 1953. In his play, Arthur Miller provides his characters with wide variety of personality traits and specific motivations that correspond with them. Through the use of dialogue and his description , Miller displays the motives of John

Not only do both of these things deal with the point in society where hysteria takes over, but innocent people are said to be “evil” types of people. During the Red Scare, McCarthy was making accusations of over 200 people being “known communists”. (McCarthy Army Hearings Begin) Even just the mention of a name would lead to someone becoming guilty of being a communist. This relates to Abigail and her friends making accusations about many people in Salem participating in witchcraft. Abigail, who was in control of her group of girls, would only need to say one word about someone in Salem, and then they were arrested for witchcraft. (Miller) McCarthy and Abigail are very similar in the way they both have a great amount of power when it comes to both of the “witch hunts”. Just like hysteria caused people to name names in The Crucible, paranoia took over during the time of the Red Scare. During the McCarthy hearings many people were scared to be accused themselves, so they start to name names. (Victims of McCarthyism) This was the paranoia that was taking over

The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller. The word crucible means an extreme test or trial. The play dealt with the search for witches in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The character Abigail showed shocking behavior during the search for witches in Salem. Her shocking behavior was possibly indicated due to her affair with John Proctor, her witnessing her parents die in front of her, and her living with Reverend Parris who did not like children.

Aimee Madrigal Mr. Jones English 11 27 February 2018 “The Crucible” and the Red Scare During the time when “The Crucible” was written, it had a major impact on Arthur Miller the United States and Russia were going through the Red Scare which was a major influence when Arthur Miller was writing the play. Through writing this play, Arthur Miller wanted to remind people of how the chaos of the witch hunts could relate to the communists people would try to hunt down in the United States. Miller used the history of the Salem Witch Trials to write this play, so he could educate people about the possibilities that could come from insensitively accusing others.

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible was written during the McCarthy Era. Miller's reason behind the book was to show how we repeated history. We repeated history in a sense of witch hunts. In this case, he used the book as an extended metaphor to link McCarthyism at the time to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. This extended metaphor has various similarities to McCarthyism, the hearings, and how these two hunts came to be.

As a response to the growing hysteria revolving around the Red Scare during the 1950s, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible. He crafted The Crucible to use the historical events of the Salem Witch Trials to emphasize themes of human nature that reoccurred during the events of the “McCarthy Era,”. The Crucible includes the themes of the desire to gain, or remain in power for the purpose of self preservation, as well as how fear acts as a strong motivator, to represent the natural themes of humanity. In terms of specific examples of human nature in early American society, Miller highlighted the matters of intolerance, and people’s concern for their own reputation in Salem.

To note the similarity, “The Crucible” was an analogy for a contemporary witch hunt in the McCarthy era. Miller's play, The Crucible, was a comparison between the Salem Witchcraft Trials and The Red Scare, yet the idea was never directly displayed in his work. To add on, the timeline of the 1680's and 1690's witchery accusations was very similar to those of the 1920's Red Scare, communist accusations (“The’). Within The Crucible, people are being

The Importance of Individuality Many people throughout the world have different definitions of individualism. According to Merriam-Webster, an online dictionary, “the belief that the needs of each person are more important than the needs of the whole society or group” is the definition of individualism. This definition seems to view individualism as a bad thing for society, but if each individual is not able to rely on themselves, then there would be no society because no one would be able to get anything done.

Arthur Miller wrote this loosely based on the Salem Witch Trials. It parallels the Red Scare of Communism (1917-1920). During this time, citizens went to great lengths in order to protect themself from being accused. The Crucible takes place in a religious, confining Puritan setting. Because of this, characters are deeply motivated to be seen as “good” in front of their fellow citizens and eventually their God. When Abigail Williams is caught dancing and drinking blood by her Reverent Uncle Parris, he is enraged that she is going to sully his prestigious name. Because of this deeply religious setting, Abigail feels motivated to accuse others of witchcraft in order to take the spotlight off of herself. The Puritan community parallels the setting in which

‘The Crucible’, written by Arthur Miller more than 60 years ago, is a drama based on events of 17th century that deals with religious hysteria and literal witch hunting that swept American town of Salem. Similar political hysteria and symbolic witch hunting occurred in American society in the 1950s about anti-communism led by anti-communist crusaders like Senator, Joseph McCarthy. Miller’s main aim in 1953 was to cast light on this American paranoia about communism and especially Soviet influence of which American had great fear of.