Comparison Of The Crucible and McCarthyism The quality of being wise is not given by age, but by experience. Knowledge and upstanding judgment must be earned, even by men in power. Senator Joseph McCarthy tampered with the minds of thousands by using their lack of sagacity against them. During his term, McCarthy named playwright Arthur Miller, along with over 200 others a communist. In the early 1950s, many looked to McCarthy as protection against the Cold War, but for Miller, it was the spark that lit the match. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and the Red Scare are direct correlates because The Crucible is based on the selfish intentions Senator McCarthy possesses, “witches” were shunned just as the individuals blacklisted for communist …show more content…
The realization that anyone could be accused, even if innocent of treason, paralyzed many Americans into submission (Miller). By the 50s when Miller began thinking of writing The Crucible, he could see the many liberals “fearful of being identified as covert communists if they should protest too strongly” (Miller). Inevitably the anxiety of being accused led many to abandon their beliefs in order to fly under the radar (Miller). The same went for the citizens of Salem, when accused there were only two pro-life options: confess to witchcraft or pin the blame on someone else. If the defendant did not want to rot in jail, they simply pointed a finger at someone else. Mary Warren, a character in The Crucible, “[pointed] at Proctor: [and screamed] you’re the Devil’s man!” in order to remove the blame from herself and put Proctor in her place (Miller 1151). Even with the amounting evidence many people would rather “cut off [their] own hand “ before admitting that they witness the government punish innocent people because the thought that there is no logic behind the accusations is inconceivable (Miller 23, Miller). Recognizing the lack of reasoning or proof behind allegations behind witches or communists is petrifying to those who even had the merest scrape with the …show more content…
Miller even goes as far as to base his entire drama on the selfishness McCarthyism stirred. Recalling the blacklisted celebrities and giving them new life as characters in his play, shunned for witchcraft. Finally granting his actors accused their freedom through a method that became popular during the hunt for communists: accusing a neighbor. While the horrors of Salem return to haunt textbooks, nothing is as chilling as the malicious acts of prejudice at the hands of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The same gruesome acts of intolerance were retold to the nation in Arthur Miller’s The