Arthur Miller in the novel, “The crucible”, analyze obliquely the relation between The Salem witch hunt with The McCarthyism. Miller supports his analogy by emphasizing the characteristics that relate the witch hunt with the McCarthyism. The author’s purpose is to express his philosophical assumptions about the misjudgment, chaos and hysteria, that is reappearing throw the history in different faces and political assumptions of the McCarthyism in order to arouse people from their blind obstinacy for what was really happening.
The author writes in a formal tone to of course all socialists, historians, and people with vulnerability to suffer this kind of event. In Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, the events of the Salem witch trials stem from the community’s bitterness over political, financial, and personal issues, causing hysteria upon the Salem citizens. This scandal is seized by Abigail Williams as an opportunity to seek power and revenge, similarity with Joseph McCarthy in the Red Scare, when he used it as a tool to raise his power, until president Eisenhower instructed his vice president, Richard Nixon to stop him.
Both of them recognized, a little late, all the chaos that McCarthyism was causing rather than fixing, as mentioned in The Red Scare and McCarthyism, in a nutshell’, “Men who have in the past done effective work exposing communists in this country have, by reckless talk and questionable methods, made themselves the issue rather than the cause they believe in so deeply” (Nixon, p. 3).
The Essay on Mccarthyism And The Witch Trials
... between Joseph McCarthy's hunt for communists and the famous witch hangings in Salem. Miller wanted to show that McCarthy's accusations were nothing but ... parallels suggesting history repeats itself through the destructiveness of McCarthyism and the Salem witch trials. Miller relied heavily on metaphors within The Crucible to ...
The philosophical assumptions were that the crucial event was the blacklist of oneself’s name, even if one was innocent the fact of being spotted as a witch or communist was the end of one social reputation such as Miller mentioned in “why I wrote ‘The crucible’ “the crucial damning event was signing of one’s name in “The devil’s book”, In time of hysteria and delusion drowning suspicion on oneself was as easy as pie, for instance the authority was never questioned, they would say -are you with us, or against us? , even talk to blacklisted people wasn’t the smart thing to do, it would been seen as “fraternizing with the enemy”, “the old friend of a blacklisted person crossing the street to avoid being seen talking to him” (Miller,,“why I wrote ‘The crucible’ , because do such things would mean the risk of being blacklisted, this was the psychological element of fear applied in both the citizens of Salem 1691, and Americans 1950.
Miller political assumptions were that Joseph McCarthy’s role was to pretend been helping the society but actually was doing the contrary by increasing chaos, and misjudgment, “sneering like a villain, he comes across now as nearly comical, a self-aware performer keeping a straight face as he does his juicy threat-shtick” (Miller,“why I wrote ‘The crucible’ ”(¶3), his power stirred fear of creeping communism, at the peak of McCarthyism the authority example to follow wasn’t as complete, instead of represent safety and order, as it should have, it became one of McCarthy’s tools in his game.
“The old political and moral reality had melted like a Dali watch” (Miller,“why I wrote ‘The crucible’. Arthur Miller’s purpose for writing The crucible was to express his philosophical and political assumptions about the matter that was happening in that stage of The United States history, The McCarthyism, which he easily draw the analogy with the Witch hunt at Salem in the winter of 1691, both were situations of spreading chaos, hysteria ,and dilution, where both Abigail Williams and Joseph McCarthy raised their power, respectively, and both ended up by jeopardizing the original situation.
