Government officials during both times conducted a “witch hunt” in the classical sense, accusing people of being communists (or witches) and prosecuting those found “guilty.” Arthur Miller used the Salem Witch Trials to symbolize the corruption and hysteria of society during the 1950s and convey his experience as someone who fell victim. The concept of social corruption is evident in the Salem Witch Trials and during the Red Scare. This is demonstrated most clearly when observing what the girls did to take advantage of the justice system.
All over the world people have religions, cultures, and beliefs, that help them decide how they act or live in life. An example of this is in the play, The Crucible. In the script, The crucible, by Arthur Miller, the people of Salem are Puritans who are led in a theocracy. Because the people of Salem are puritans, they believe in God and the devil. The people of Salem also believe in witchcraft as the devil’s work.
When Miller writes the novel, he is not just writing about the Salem Witch Trials. Miller is writing about McCarthyism and communists, too. McCarthyism is like the Salem Witch Trials in the aspect that it is corrupt and people start accusing innocent people. In McCarthyism, McCarthy decides that people are communists if they show signs of being “UnAmerican.” Then, he encourages people to report anyone that they suspect are communists.
Hysteria in Salem The Crucible is a play written by American author, Arthur Miller, in 1953. It is a somewhat fictional play about the Salem Witch Trials. Miller wrote it as an allegory to the Red Scare, the promotion of fear of a potential rise of communism. Miller himself was blacklisted for refusing to testify in front of the HUAC, a committee that was created to investigate any person who might be a communist.
Every person has that one person that they believe is completely evil. Now imagine a town full of that person with a couple of good role models thrown in there. That is exactly how Salem, the town in The Crucible, is. The whole witch trials started with people getting revenge on the people they believe wronged them. For some reason, the public just goes along with it and believes their lies.
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.
Shawn Jande Ms. Clancy American Literature B3 15 November 2015 The Crucible Analytical Essay Imagine, being accused of a crime you didn’t commit by your neighbors and friends out of jealousy, and desire. This is what many people in the town of Salem had to go through during the time of the Salem Witch Trials. People's motives such as: gaining and maintaining power, and aspirations for what other people had caused them to make irrational, and atrocious decisions. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, desire and power drive characters to create chaos in the community.
The Salem witch trials proved to be one of the most cruel and fear driven events to ever occur in history. Many innocent people were accused of witchcraft, and while some got out of the situation alive not everyone was as lucky. Arthur Miller the author of The Crucible conveys this horrific event in his book and demonstrates what fear can lead people to do. But the reason as to why Arthur Miller felt the need to write The Crucible in the first place was because the unfortunate reality that history seemed to have repeated itself again. In the article “Are You Now or Were You Ever”, Arthur Miller claims that the McCarthy era and the Salem witch trials were similar and he does this through his choice of diction, figurative language, and rhetorical questions.
In Salem the citizens feared that the devil
Much of what happens in Salem still resembles some things we see in society today. The word of one man can change people’s ideas and images of another without conclusive evidence. What people fear the most can sometimes bind us together, even if it is not
The dangers of letting fear be in control were present in Salem and the United States and Miller wanted people to realize that. Fear was gripping the US and it was in the mind of most people. The leaders in the United States were persecuting anyone who even questioned the US government. Miller didn’t like that but couldn't write his opinion raw because he too would get arrested. He used a story from the past to provide details about the present and this kept him from legal trouble.
“Character Analysis over The Crucible” Arthur Miller is a commonly-known playwright, most famous for his 1953 play, The Crucible. The basis for The Crucible came from the witch trials which occurred in Salem, Massachusetts during the puritan era. Miller even uses some of the same characters in his dramatized play that were a part of the original witch trials in Salem. However, Miller made a few alterations to the historical members of the Salem society in order to suit his dramatic purpose in The Crucible, particularly Abigail Williams, John Proctor, and Reverend Samuel Parris.
He achieves this by utilizing word choice. By using words such as “darkness” and “seeping,” Miller takes advantage of these words’ negative connotations to produce a dreary and depressing mood. In addition, Miller also sets the scene at a jail to show the kind of conditions many of the accused people were imprisoned in. It reveals a reason behind why the people of Salem accused others or refused to speak any names in court. In order to protect themselves or others from
Miller believed that there was an “element of the marvelous in it” that he had to make into a play (Miller 96). Since there was so much going on in America with mass panic, it made Miller think of other points in history when Americans were put into a great panic over something so inane. He had studied witchcraft slightly in college, so once he went back to it and read a book by Charles W. Upham he “knew (he) had to write about the period” (Miller 96). Once Miller had researched enough about the people surrounding the events, he began writing. The witch trials are a perfect comparison to the HUAC trials of Miller’s time.
Salem in The Crucible from Arthur Miller is the home to chaos and murder due to witchery that is still unclear as to whether it happened or not. These events caused major changes in the characters from start to finish, at the same time a change in society. Furthermore, calling what happened in Salem a tragedy is an understatement when Salem is clearly in a state of anarchy. Similarly, authority is discontinued and Salem enters a “she said he said” state of mind which only further confuses Salem while also hiding the true slaughterer of innocent Puritan people right in front of their faces. Furthermore, this rising anarchy inhibits the people of logical thinking and hides major perpetrators right in front of them.
