The crucible allegory. The Crucible: An Allegory of The Communist Witch Hunt 2022-12-21
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The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, is a play that serves as an allegory for the McCarthy era and the Red Scare in the United States during the 1950s. This allegory is made clear through the characterizations and themes present in the play.
The character of John Proctor, a farmer who is falsely accused of witchcraft, represents those who were accused of being communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era. Proctor, like many of those accused during this time, is a good man who is caught up in a terrible situation through no fault of his own. He is a victim of the fear and hysteria that grips the town of Salem, much like how many innocent people were targeted during the Red Scare.
Similarly, the character of Abigail Williams represents the fear-mongering and manipulative tactics used by McCarthy and his supporters to further their own agendas. Abigail, a young girl with a troubled past, falsely accuses others of witchcraft in an attempt to deflect suspicion from herself and to gain power and attention. This mirrors the way that McCarthy and others used false accusations and smear campaigns to ruin the reputations of their political enemies.
The theme of mass hysteria is also present in both The Crucible and the McCarthy era. In the play, the town of Salem becomes gripped by a frenzied belief in witchcraft, leading to the wrongful accusations and executions of many innocent people. This can be compared to the widespread paranoia and mistrust that characterized the Red Scare, with people turning on each other and accusing each other of being communists or communist sympathizers.
Overall, The Crucible serves as a powerful allegory for the McCarthy era and the Red Scare in the United States. Through its characterizations and themes, the play illustrates the dangers of fear, mistrust, and mob mentality, and serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of allowing these emotions to control our actions.
Examples Of Allegory In The Crucible
Many others were blacklisted because they would not give up names of people they believed were guilty of communistic acts. He shows through a story that the witch trials were much more than just people calling others witches. It is said to have been a modern-day witch hunt. During this time period, of 1950, there was a rising fear in the US that anyone with any affiliation with the Communist Party was a potential threat. The FBI had no grounds or evidence to stand on when accusing these people. As stated before, Miller made these minor changes to make sense of his own life and times. This all leading up to him writing The Crucible, one of his most well known works.
According to Miller's note, dramatic purposes have sometimes required many characters to be fused into one. This pitted South Korea against the communist forces in North Korea. Miller refused to name anyone else who was involved in subversive political activities and this soon led him to write the Crucible. On the day McCarthy addressed the supposed internal Communist takeover, he spoke of 81 cases. Arthur Miller uses his play The Crucible as an allegory for the McCarthy Hearings through characters, and events that take place in the play. He himself knew that it was all a masquerade so that he could gain popularity. The government had construed an inescapable series of persecution, ruining the lives of many thousands, all for a personal or political motive.
Are 'The Crucible' and 'The Wizard of Oz' allegories?
After Abigail and John had an affair, she was dismissed from the household, and Abigail and her friend, Ann Putnam, began showing signs of being afflicted by witchcraft and accusing people of practicing witchcraft. This was a time of much hypocrisy in the people of the town of Salem. He used Salem as his example to show how in the Red Scare they were doing… "Literature opens a dark window on the soul, revealing more about what is bad in human nature then what is good. McCarthy was a Senator who made a list of people he claimed to be known communists working for the State Department. In his play, he used the Salem witch trials to represent the McCarthy Era because he saw that the nation was facing the same events that Salem went through back in the late 1600's. After Abigail had an affair with John Proctor and then drank blood to try to kill his wife, Abigail and her friends started accusing everyone in town of cohorting with the devil, 'I danced for the Devil; I saw him; I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand.
Most readers are unfamiliar with McCarthyism. At the time that The Crucible was published, America had a huge fear of communism. Why is The Crucible by Arthur Miller not an allegory? Perhaps Miller was particularly sensitive to this modern-day "witch hunt" because he had some fleeting associations with the American Communist Party. So he starts a witch hunt to find the communists in the United States and he targeted celebrities of Hollywood such as Helen Keller, Langston Hughes and Charlie Chaplin put them all on trial for been associated with the Communist Party. Finding the perfect representation, Miller wrote the play in about a year. With more than 200 people accused and 20 people executed, the Salem Witch trials became a serious case that lasted throughout history inspiring authors like Arthur Miller to write a play based on this issue. Miller suffered through accusations of possibly believing in communism; as a result, he wrote a play called The Crucible, in which he used the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 to explain the communist hysteria during the 1950s.
Staten Island Technical High School, 7 November 18, New York. In The Crucible he presented a universal message. People from all walks of life were accused of communist leanings: government workers, teachers, actors, and writers. During the McCarthy era, freedom was a very important aspect in life; during the Salem witch trials, religion was a very important aspect of life. Miller modified characters like Corey in order to relate the Witch Trials directly to the McCarthy era in which every character in the book is an allegory to a member of the Hollywood Ten.
Since he included this note, he wanted to make it evident that he wasn't trying to rewrite history. There was also a metaphorical witch hunt during the 1980s with the AIDS crisis. In the early 1950s, Senator Joseph R. The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller in 1953 about The Salem Witch Trials of 1692. This conviction applied to both the guilty and the innocent. His father, Isidore Miller, ran a successful coat manufacturing business for women, while his mother, Augusta Miller, was an educator and an avid reader of novels biography. The poppet was a seemingly innocuous gift that brought undeserved destruction to the Proctors.
The Crucible is, on the surface, a retelling of the Salem witch trials. His investigation, which came to be known as McCarthyism, whipped people into a frenzy, lobbing accusations at anyone who disagreed with his conservative viewpoints. The first time he did not confess and names. Known for his popular plays and novels, he was born to an immigrant family of three, soon to be five with his younger sister, in Harlem, New York on the 17th of October in 1915. 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. Furthermore, another group known as the HUAC had a similar goal of investigating communist and fascist organizations.
The majority, however, valued their morals and refused to give into political pressure by lying. Society shunned and killed those who were deemed witches by the court. . When Cheever discovers the poppet, he notes the presence of a needle in the same area where Williams had placed a needle on her body. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, a young group of girls commit witchcraft which eventually leads to the arrest of over 100 women. Government officials, actors, professors, scientists, and authors all came under the scrutiny of his "witch hunt" for communist spies in America.
The public would take the hearings as fact resulting in the accused losing their job and life. The people who were accused did nothing to bring on the accusations. One was to admit to witchcraft then turn around and accuse others. Although The Crucible is fictitious, the story depicts the historical information of the Salem witch trials, and blends them with fictitious characters to create a very realistic plot and conflict in the story. An allegory is an extended metaphor in which the characters or objects in the story represent an outside meaning.
Overall, Miller has the right to change and influence characters in his point of view in order to get a certain point across. McCarthy continued his trials and questioning of several United States government departments, even after he became the chairman of the Committee on Government Operations of the Senate and of its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, for another two years. With the freedom of speech, Miller should not face any legal issues and with a broader message in mind, a tweak in character wouldn't be a major problem. Those who repented and named names of suspected communists could return to business those who refused to address the committee were cited for contempt McCarthyism. Miller wrote an article on why he wrote The Crucible, and he references the thought process in which people were undergoing. The Crucible Tragedy 1029 Words 5 Pages In salem the accused were communist and the accusers are McCarthyists.
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