Essay on The Witch Hearings in The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller wrote plays as a way of showing people the real picture of what life was really like during the Great Depression and after World War II. Before the Great Depression many Americans were living in a significant time period, the Roaring Twenties. People had radios, automobiles, and movies with sounds. Then it all suddenly came to an end with the Stock Market Crash, leading to the Great Depression. During the Great Depression, Americans faced poverty, and had no income because jobs weren’t available. Throughout his life Miller influenced many people with his plays, and his contributions to this day because people want to read and understand what was truly happening in past history. For example, “The Crucible” is a play about the

In 1951, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, a play referring to the time in Massachusetts during the Salem witch trials. The Salem Witch Trials was a time period when people were being randomly accused of being witches by one another. The people who were accused of being witches had to either give false confessions or were executed in terrible ways. In The Crucible, the accused were sentenced to death by hangings, pressings, died in prison. In the play, nineteen people were hung, about thirteen died in prison, and one died by being pressed. In the play, the author Miller uses many examples of hyperbole and exaggeration as the characters are talking . The author also used imagery to describe the settings in the play. In The Crucible, the author wanted to give us a real life description of how that time period might have been. As the story goes on, we see the craziness of the salem witch trials and how absurd it was.

Authors used their literary work to get a point across to the public in the story The Crucible; Arthur Miller used events and characters to show the similarities to McCarthyism which was prevalent in the 1950s. McCarthyism was associated with the period in the United Sates also known as the Second Red Scare. McCarthyism is very similar in the way that Joe McCarthy accused Americans of being communist and in The Crucible people were being accused of being witches. It is known that Arthur Miller wrote this story as a reaction to a tragic time in our history.

Have you ever wonder what life was like during the McCarthy Era? As many generations passes by, a lot tend to look back reminisce on those who had lost their lives. Innocents were accused without any evidence, suffered, tortured, and killed. People were arrested with no doubt just because of accusations that were made. In the story, The Crucible which takes place in Salem is about innocent people getting accuse with false accusations because of witchcraft. However, McCarthyism is similar to The Crucible because of those who were accused and tortured. Which then the innocent no longer had that pride of being who they were because of the false accusations. Therefore, The Crucible by Arthur Miller is an allegory for the Red Scare in the

Greetings to you all; thank you all for taking the time to hear my arguments and for considering my suggestion for the inclusion of The Crucible in the 2013 play season of the Queensland Theatre Company. My understanding is that the company's intent is to pursue the culture of fear as the overarching theme for this year's selection of plays. This is an ideal theme because we are, unfortunately, living in a time of great fear and distrust, with good reason considering the rates of crime and international violence. Arthur Miller's The Crucible is an ideal work to complement the theme of this year's play cycle. Although set in the time of the 1692 Salem witch trials during the colonial period, the play was intentionally written by Miller as an allegorical work used to represent the dangers of McCarthyism in the United States in the 1950s. Miller himself said, "It was not only the rise of 'McCarthyism' that moved me, but something which seemed much more weird and mysterious. It was the fact that a political, objective, knowledgeable campaign 安as capable of creating not only of terror, but a new subjective reality, a veritable mystique which was gradually assuming even a holy resonance" (Lavanture 2007). Its message of the dangers of fanaticism and the horrendous acts human beings can perpetrate upon each other in the name of fear, particularly when that terror is backed up by the government and system of justice, is a universal one which still

During the time of Mccarthyism, fear and illogical thinking were also very prominent. According to pbs.org, “a young Senator named Joseph McCarthy made a public accusation that more than two hundred “card-carrying” communists had infiltrated the United States government ( Mccarthyism) ”. Although these accusations were eventually proven to be untrue, it instilled fear in the already paranoid public and resulted in many people having their passports taken away, the loss of their jobs, and even jail time for some of the accused ( Mccarthyism). Being one of the accused, Arthur Miller knows all about the illogical thought processes that created the chaos. In The Crucible, he incorporates the faults of Mccarthyism with the underlying themes of the Salem Witch Trials to encourage the reader to see the wrongdoings of both events.

In this essay, I intend to analyse the historical context of The Crucible and its relevance in today’s society. I believe that Arthur Miller’s life and his experience of McCarthyism strongly influenced the writing of The Crucible.

In The Crucible how did the people of Salem react under the pressure of the false accusations and convictions of the Salem Witch Trials? The girls in Salem practiced witchcraft and blamed lots of the innocent people that would be tried and penalized, just to take the pressure off themselves. All of the girls are guilty and they got away with it. The mature people of Salem valued justice, this would cost them their lives by trying to disprove the court saying the girls are frauds and Danforth’s decisions were wrong. Arthur Miller makes it clear in The Crucible that justice requires honesty and you will have to be willing to sacrifice to achieve it.

When one confronts the unknown, calamity may outbreak in order to achieve knowledge of what it is. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller shows that the unknown may cause calamity through the corruption of the Witch Trials of Salem. Throughout the novel, Miller shows that the unknown will destroy a civilization if the higher-class allow it through the accusation of Rebecca Nurse, the actions of Abigail Williams to rid of Elizabeth Proctor, and the structure of the village

Responsibility is being accountable for your own actions. In The Crucible a group of girls accused many people of witchcraft and many of them were executed after being processed by the court of Salem. The girls accused these victims ,but they are merely are children ,which leaves the responsibility with the court (the adults), the final say of the accused.

During the rise of European Fascism and brutal anti-semitism, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible out of an act of desperation, by writing “The Crucible” he was able to express McCarthyism during the 1950s, When everyone accused each other of being a “Communist” the main fear during that time, that brings a unique smile to our generation. To write The Crucible Arthur Miller had to use a different language, a new language that set it apart from the 1950s, he created a story that could be teachable and relatable to the reader and himself. By using master characterization, false accusations, and confession, he was able to make The Crucible relatable to 1950s McCarthyism.

The crucible takes place in Salem in 1692. Several girls were dancing in the woods which was very abnormal and considered a form of witchcraft. The doctor who examined them concluded it was witchcraft. To get the heat off of their backs they started accusing others in the village of performing witchcraft. Many accusations were made and others started accusing others which lead to many people being hung and arrested. Abigail Williams and Betty were in the group of girls that were caught dancing in the woods. They were the first to start accusing others to get the pressure off of them. John proctors wife, Elizabeth proctor gets accused. John then goes to the court to explain how everybody is lying and falsely accusing people to save themselves.

Whether it was McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s, the Dancing Plague of 1518, or the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, mass hysteria has been a prevalent theme in history across the ages. It can grip even the most advanced societies and wreak havoc, plummeting the population into fear and paranoia. No author captures the devastation that mass hysteria can create as efficiently as Arthur Miller in his stage play, The Crucible, which is a semi-fictionalized retelling of the aforementioned Salem Witch Trials. After his own experience of being blacklisted during the Red Scare, Miller wrote this allegory to satire the events of his time, and shed light on the evilness and hypocrisy of McCarthy. The Crucible effectively characterizes mass hysteria

Witnessing first hand real life “witch hunts” during the McCarthy era gave Arthur Miller a knack for pinpointing motivations for people to lie, and the ability to create compelling scenes in which characters rely on, in varying degrees, circumventing the truth.

Joseph McCarthy was a corrupt politician in the 1950s who was credited with starting the red scare. His rise to power solely involved ruining others reputation and career by accusing them to have communist ideals, all of his accusations had little to no evidence, but people were forced to confess or they would be prosecuted. Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” is an allegory for McCarthyism during the red scare due to the near parallel events that confide in the plot and history such the accused confessing to a crime they did not commit to save their life, people rising to power by taking advantage of others, anda accusations having merit with no evidence. “The Crucible” was written in 1952 just two years after the start of the McCarthy era.