The Crucible Red Scare Analysis

Have you ever been accused of something? So to keep from getting into deep trouble you quickly exclaim ‘you saw so-and-so do this’. Suddenly, you’re put on a back-burner, as this new evidence is looked into. This is what happened back in the 1940’s. People in the U.S. were scared by Joseph McCarthy on the sudden rise in communism in other areas of the world, the closest being the Soviet Union. The Scare inspired Arthur Miller to write his play. The Crucible is an allegory for the Red Scare. Arthur Miller wrote the play to show people that the craziness of the witch hunts were extremely similar to the communist hunts, and to show the dangers of being quick to accuse others to avoid consequences.

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 Crucible by Arthur Miller is a historical play set in 1962 in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts. As you may know, you've all placed your trust in the words and actions of someone close to you. And what do they do? They betray you! It's rarely justified, and can happen to the best of us. Based on authentic records of witchcraft trials in the seventeenth-century this play explains how a small group of girls manage to create a massive panic in their town by spreading accusations of witchcraft. These rumors in turn are the causes that many citizens are hung for. This essay will show how the lies and betrayal of a few individuals eventually leads to the downfall of Salem and its society.

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

The year is 1692. Throughout the small, Puritan, seaside community of Salem, rumors and accusations fly like gusts of ocean wind. Neighbors turn on neighbors, and even the most holy church-goers are accused of being the devil’s servants. The Crucible details this real-life tragedy of the Salem witch trials, in which nineteen members of the Salem community were hanged for alleged witchcraft. Abigail Williams, a seemingly innocent girl, accuses dozens of Salem’s citizens of witchcraft through the support of her mob of girls and the complicity of the court officials. The title of this play gives significant insight into the experiences of several of these Salem citizens. Although a crucible is often used in chemistry for heating up substances, the title of the play carries a much greater weight. In his famous play The Crucible, Arthur Miller uses the title of “crucible” to signify the severe and unrelenting tests of faith and character that many of the community members endure throughout the Salem witch trials, which he achieves through the use of figurative language and fallacies of relevance and insufficiency.

In “The Crucible”, the author, Arthur Miller, conveys what he believes Senator Joe McCarthy is doing during the Red Scare. The Salem Witch Trials were true events, while this play uses these trials and adds a fictional twist to show a point. Witchcraft was punishable by death during this time. Once names started flying in town it was like a chain reaction, people were accusing others of witchcraft because they were not fond of them or they had something they wanted. Some definitions state mass hysteria as contagious, the characters in this play deemed it true. In this play, innocent people were hung because some of the girls in town cried witch.

The Crucible Essay The McCarthy era was filled with a lot of lies that ruined the lives of others, Joseph McCarthy accused a lot of people of being communist out of greed like Abigail accused people of witchcraft in the crucible. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is an allegory for the red scare in the McCarthy era because of the Evidence, trials, and the accusations. The types of evidence that was provided during the Red scare and the Crucible were forn lack of better term complete and utter nonsense for example, Joseph McCarthy’s proof was that he had a list of names and that these people were communist, this was nether questioned or validated it was just heard and they believed it.

Arthur Miller writes about the tragic results of human failings in his play, The Crucible. He presents characters from the past and infuses them with renewed vitality and color. Miller demonstrates the horrifying results of succumbing to personal motives and flaws as he writes the painful story of the Salem witch trials. Not only do the trials stem from human failings but also from neglect of moral and religious considerations of that time. Characters begin to overlook Puritan values of thrift and hope for salvation. Focusing on the flawed characters, they begin to exhibit land lust, envy of the miserable and self-preservation.

A Crucible took place in 1692 when Abagail’s one little lie causes mass hysteria by lying about preforming witchcraft. She and her friends go into the woods to dance and wish for things they want to happen, Abagail wishes that Goody Proctor would die so she could have John Proctor to herself. However, Abagail lies about it and says that she saw someone else with the devil and everyone plays along to save their own skin. This relates to The Red Scare in 1950 when Joseph McCarthy lied about having a list of over two-hundred people in the State Department who were members of the American Communist Party. He knew that everyone was fearful so he took advantage of it, this created McCarthyism and a mass hysteria. The Crucible and The Red Scare

The Red Scare was a period in time where fear and paranoia were instilled into Americans over the possibility of a communist uprising. During this time there were witch hunts conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee to get rid of any communists, lack of trust among citizens, discrimination against some ethnic groups, and innocent people were accused or even punished. Arthur Miller was a famous play-writer who, during the time of the Red Scare, created the widely known theatrical work, The Crucible. It depicts many similarities between the people and events during the Red Scare and the Salem witch hunts, such as the fact that many people were being accused for being something that they really weren’t and Judge

The Crucible, an excellent drama for the large diversity of themes and its judgements to the drama. These notions and themes appear from the methodology of insincerity to reposition out of harm’s way and tossing an accusation towards another individual to the idea of valuing your family name. The witch-hunt plays an important portion of influencing the characters along with how they act to the events. The Crucible contains a variety of means to interpret the Author’s intentions of the Crucible, but the sentiments of the Red-Scare developed prominently throughout the entire drama. As mentioned, the witch-hunts procured an important role in replicating the same events that occurred in Arthur Miller’s days.

The Crucible is a fictional play written by Arthur Miller based on the Salem Witch Trials of the late 1600s. It was used by Miller to condemn the orchestrators of the panic called the Red Menace (Navasky 79). The Crucible starts off with a girl who was caught dancing in the woods with her friends who has become ill (Miller I. 299-301). She and her friends cover up the dancing by accusing others of being witches. The people of the village believe the girls and they continue to accuse others until over 200 people are accused of witchcraft and condemned to death (Miller I. 982-1077). By continuing to lie, the girls dig themselves a hole deeper and deeper until they cannot get out and

Hysteria and injustice in "The Crucible" The crucible is a figurative play relating the culture of the Salem society and the political events surrounding the McCarthy hearings by author, Arthur Miller. The author, through the 1953 play, illustrates the way fear and hysteria in the society discredits logic and leads to injustices to some people. The play has its setting at the Salem society, which is a close-knit society with a strict code of ethics. Precisely, the society is a rigid somber place that prohibits people to break the dominating monotony and strict work ethics.

The play, ‘The Crucible’, illustrates how people react to mass hysteria created by a person or group of people, as people did during the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s and the Salem witch hunts of 1962. Many Americans were wrongly accused of being Communist sympathizers. The activities of the House of Un-American Activities Committee began to be linked with the witchcraft trials that had taken place in the town of Salem. This provided Miller with the catalyst to write ‘The Crucible’. Without the knowledge of the McCarthy hearings and the Salem witch hunts, ‘The Crucible’ may be seen as a melodrama and the events in the play, sensationalised. It is not a melodrama because it is not overly dramatic; the

Nearly 325 years ago, an entire town went mad with accusations, paranoia and fear, with the belief that witches were among them. The event was mirrored over 250 years later, but instead of it being about witchcraft, it was about communists in our own government, and it occoured within the United States government. The crucible by Arthur Miller is an allegory for the Red Scare in the McCarthy Era beacause of falsified evidence, paranoia, and hostility.