Arthur Miller based his piece entitled “the Crucible” on the Terror Campaign that was led by the United States to demonize USSR and other Countries who are exercising communism during the Cold war. Religion affects every part of life, but it is the religion where there are constrictions that leads to the difficulty of managing emotions such as rage, jealousy, or resentment that had led to interpersonal arguments and grudges over property, religious offices, and sexual behaviour that have generated to rise underneath the theocratic surface. These had caused a great pressure that was combined with fear about supernatural forces, resulted to a mania of the witch trials. 250 years ago, things like this has been happening for years, The Crucible was just a manifestation of McCarthyism during the Cold War. It gives us the emphasis of looking back in the past so that we will know the mistakes that had been occurring due to the misjudgement of authorities and to ensure that it does not happen again..
In Arthur Miller 's play The Crucible, false accusations and fear are used to imprison and kill many people accused of being witches. In this way, The Crucible stands as an allegory for McCarthy 's communist hunt, during which many people were also killed and imprisoned due to accusations of communism. By comparing McCarthyism to the Salem Witch Trials, Miller is able to communicate that people should not conform to societal trends because these trends may be misleading and cause innocent people to get hurt. Many characters in The Crucible serve as allegories to McCarthy 's communist hunt, specifically Abigail Williams, Giles Corey, and Betty Parris. Abigail is indirectly compared to McCarthy at many points throughout the play.
Many people had been wrongfully accused and suffered the consequences of one person’s error. McCarthy would be similar to Abigail whereas Miller would be similar to Proctor. Abigail accused many of being witches while McCarthy accused many of being Communists. Proctor would be similar to Miller because they both were brought in front of the court to tell on their friends, which they both refused to do so. Miller had once said, “It would probably never had occurred to write a play about the Salem witch trials of 1962 had I not seen some astonishing correspondences with that calamity in the America of the late 40’s and early 50’s.
In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible many conflicts that could be addressed about society in every era were brought to light. Widely known for the subject matter of this play, The Salem Witch Trials, the realities and fallacies of the trials were described in the words of Arthur Miller. One main factor within this play is the theme, Jealousy does more harm than good. From jealousy of wealth, to family, to marriage all aspects of jealousy are shown within this small pilgrimed village in Massachusetts. In The Crucible, the story outlines a young girl, Abigail Williams’, love and lust for an older man, John Proctor, who is not only older but is married.
The Crucible is an allegorical play written by Arthur Miller that criticizes McCarthyism during the 1950s through an historical event called the Salem witchcraft trials. The main protagonist is John Proctor, a man with a good reputation for being an honest and a diligent person. The second most important character, Reverend Hale, is a witchcraft expert who comes to Salem to determine whether or not witchcraft is present in Salem. They both are devout Puritans; however, they are different in the ways they show their piety, causing them to have numerous similarities and differences. Proctor and Hale, are similar because they both see the genuine motivations behind the accusations and struggle to defend the people being harmed.
The Crucible is a piece of literature that can be attributed to a few other situations in history, not simply just the Salem Witch Trials. People throughout history have turned on each other in fear, and have use irrational thinking to justify what they have done. Though the story portrays the Witch Trials, it is able to connect with other events in history due to how the themes can connect with the reader and resonate with how people can feel under certain stress at these moments. Arthur Miller writes in the way that the story can live on in other situations to make points on how we treat each other during these times, the rhetorical appeals he uses becoming important as to why this story is still important to our history in more than one event. As spoken before, The Crucible is set in a certain time period, but advances its meaning into other aspects of history; written in the 50’s, it can be traced back to a connection with McCarthyism, the story an allegory for this period.
Arthur Miller, an American playwright, uses allegory in his screenplay The Crucible to demonstrate the similarities between the events of the Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare, both in which individuals were wrongfully suspected and punished. This is still an ongoing issue in society today, present in the perpetual condemnation
“The Crucible” by Arthur Miller and The Red Scare share many characteristics. “The Crucible” describes the Salem Witch Trials. These trials were during a period of time where men and women were very rancorous so others feared to speak up because they would be accused of witchcraft and killed. Similar to Arthur Miller’s book, the Red Scare was a period of time in the late 40’s and 50’s in which United States citizens were intensely paranoid of an opposing threat of communism in Eastern Europe and Asia and ultimately communists infiltrating the United States. What the Red Scare and “The Crucible” have in common is that accusations of witchcraft or communism were false, people were blind to the truth, and the accusers weren’t very tactful and
In The Crucible, Miller uses motifs to demonstrate how the idea of witchcraft that spread throughout Salem caused panic and chaos among the townspeople. One of the motifs that Arthur Miller uses to enhance the theme of the story is abandonment. During The Crucible, John Proctor had an affair with Abigail Williams causing Abigail to be fired from working in the Proctor’s household by Elizabeth Proctor. Because of this, Abigail has lost touch with John and he no longer has any feelings for her which has made Abigail feel abandoned. As voiced by Abigail Williams, “John - I am waiting for you every night” (Arthur Miller 1246) and stated by John Proctor, “Abby I never give you hope to wait for me.” (Arthur Miller 1246), It validated how Abigail is waiting for John to come back to her and he continues to tell her that he is never coming back and not to get her hopes
Miller uses elements such as tone and satire, character motivation, and indirect characterization in The Crucible to elucidate a change in political attitudes. The use of tone and satire in The Crucible