Red Scare And Mccarthyism In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

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Though Arthur Miller was writing about historical events in the 1690s, it was impossible for him to write the play without the influence of his own time period: the 1950s. His reasoning behind writing The Crucible was to represent how much the Red Scare and McCarthyism was like a witch-hunt. The Salem Witch Trials were probably one of the most recognizable witch hunts in our history, which helped Miller in his goal to show just how horrible the events in the 1940s and 50s actually were. Though witch-hunts have happened all throughout history and in almost every corner of the world, choosing to use the worst witch-hunt in American history added to the atrocity of the Red Scare. It showed just how little America had changed when it came time to point the finger at someone.…show more content…
Despite the fact that most everyone who read and saw Miller’s play believed that there are no such things as witches, the suspense of not knowing how the entire situation had become as large as it had was probably similar to that of those who lived during this reign of McCarthyism. The fact that one person, Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and Abigail Williams in 1692, could have so much control over the lives of so many people is seemingly inconceivable. Nevertheless, the relationship between the events of both the 1690s and the 1950s are so similar that, now that it has been done, it seems as though more people than just Miller should have made this comparison during that

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