Essay Example on The Crucible by Arthur Miller was based on the Salem Witch Trials

Two Witch Hunts Hundreds of Years Apart With the Same Result The Crucible by Arthur Miller was based on the Salem Witch Trials which occurred in the late 1600s In the play several young women accuse innocent people of Salem for the participating witchcraft During the trials many of the accused were unfairly persecuted such as John Proctor This event in history may be compared with the Red Scare in which people were tried for their questionable connections of communism in the United States Thus Arthur Miller writes this depiction of the witch trials as an allegory to what was going on the McCarthyism trials Miller compares one of the main characters John Proctor to himself He does this so that the reader is able to relate the similar experiences that both men faced The Crucible demonstrates the struggle and narrow-minded officials of the court which lead to the death of many innocent citizens in Salem 

The Crucible generates an allegory for Arthur Miller s struggles with McCarthyism because of his similar questioning and trial relating it to John Proctor s battle in Salem and the relation between the actions and results of the courts in both situations The play proves to represent an allegory for Miller s troubles with the court and the suspicion that the jury had among the suspects He compares the Salem Witch trials to the Red Scare by stating In both places to keep social unity intact the authority of leaders had to be hardened and words of skepticism toward them constricted

Are You Now 32 The witchcraft trials were very much like the communism skepticism in the United States at the time which many individuals were falsely accused for crimes they had not committed Arthur Miller uses several writing techniques in order to relate The Crucible as an allegory for his struggles with McCarthyism Miller exemplifies how play represents an allegory for his conflict with McCarthyism by relating his the characters to real-life people that were affected by Joe McCarthy s war path Miller relates the play to his hardship by stating in an interview Should the accused confess his honesty could only be proved by naming former confederates 

Are You Now 34 Miller is explaining how the court operated in terms of coming to their conclusions Both were so eager to put people away that they didn't have the solid evidence to do it so they blackmailed the accused into telling the names of people that were associated with the crime in question Most people gave names of people who had no possible connection just to get freed only to have the rest of their careers ruined Miller stated in an interview with PBS that he believes In all three hundred and twenty artists were blacklisted and for many of them this meant the end of exceptional and promising careers The allegory is shown when Miller indicates the similarity in Judge Danforth's statement to McCarthyism in the quote Mr Proctor When the devil came to you did you see Rebecca Nurse in his company Crucible 129 This displays how the court was fetching for straws none of the cases were proven Miller creates an allegory for McCarthyism in the novel is when Hale tells Abigail You must have no fear to tell us who they are do you understand 

We will protect you Crucible 43 This quote pressures Abigail into falsely accusing others for acts they had not committed although she is turning the blame away from herself It promises her that there will be no repercussions which is exactly what McCarthy offered the whistleblowers in his cases He is showing the similarity between these experiences of both trials Miller uses the approach in which both courts took to obtain information to link the two trials The court's actions show how unjust they were in coming to conclusions Arthur Miller is laying out the fact that as the trials continued the more strict and severe the court became This often caused for false accusations against innocent people As the trials continued the courts were able to establish their own conclusions from the proceedings 

Miller explains how John Proctor argued against the court's actions of jumping to conclusions before gaining enough logical reasoning He said that Proctor had become the most forthright voice against the madness around him Why I Wrote 26 He relates his wisdom with the court to the Proctor s relation with the Witch Trials as an allegory because they both had stood their ground against the accuser Miller states I sensed that I had at last found something of myself in it

Why I Wrote 26 He is able to complete his relationship with Proctor by conveying how the character in the novel was an inspirational figure Overall this way of relating himself to the character of John Proctor proved to be an effective representation of Miller's fight against Joe McCarthy and his trials The Crucible constructs as an allegory for Arthur Miller's experience with McCarthyism by the use the similarity to John Proctor s battle against the Salem Witch Trials and the relation between the actions of the court in both incidents Arthur Miller is able to create an allegory from the play to the actuality of his trial with several strategies He relates the involvement with the court and how they treated him in the play He then uses the similarity between the character Proctor in the play to the role he had in his struggles during the McCarthy trials In conclusion Miller used many effective relations to create an in-depth allegory of his troubles against McCarthyism in his play