The Crucible And Communism In The 1950's

Communism, a type of government that allows the government to control a majority of the aspects in your life, carried on through the 1940s all the way through the 1950s. This form of government contributed to the Red Scare, a surreal fear among many Americans. It stood as a polar opposite way of living than the typical American capitalist way of life of America's capitalist way of life. Due to the similar events between the Crucible, a play “by Arthur Miller and the fear of communism created by Senator McCarthy during the 1950s”(Maierhofer, 361). The Crucible acts as an Allegorical tale of the events that occurred in America during the 1950s.

Reverend Paris, the acting government in Salem, threatens Tituba, a slave from Barbados to “ confess” to witchcraft “or he will take her out and whip her to her death” (Miller 44). In the 1950s the House Committee on Un-American Activities blacklisted and threatened those accused of Communism to confess in the same way that the government of Salem threatened those accused of witchcraft. During both the 1692 Witch Trials and the 1950 McCarthy Trials the Government not only forced a confession, but imprisoned or killed those who refused to speak.

In the Crucible many “[people were asked] to confess themselves”(Miller 140, hard copy) Seldom did they not confess. If they refused to confess they were considered to be a witch and were executed or jailed. During the Mccarthy Era, if people were accused of being a communist and questioned, some would often plead the 5th amendment. To many McCarthyist, they considered this “positive proof that the person being questioned is a communist”(Victims of McCarthyism). In both The Crucible and McCarthyism of the 1950s people were persecuted when they executed one of their rights as a human being, freedom to or not to speak. This also caused major religious