McCarthyism in Arthur Miller's The Crucible

This study will discuss the theme of McCarthyism as portrayed in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible.

The theme of McCarthyism is not dealt with directly in the play, and Miller has been adamant at times in his disavowal of McCarthyism as the inspiration for the work, but it is undeniable that the theme of the communist witch-hunts in the early 1950s in the United States is closely tied with the literal witch-hunt occurring in the play. The nation was in the midst of a red scare in 1952, when the play was written, and Miller himself was deeply affected as an individual in the center of that scare, having been called to testify against others and refusing to do so.

Miller's play is about McCarthyism in a less limited way than many observers have noted. His work is not merely meant to be a condemnation of the communist witch-hunt, or the Puritan witch-hunt, but is rather meant to be an investigation, a dramatization, of how a false reality can be installed in a nation's consciousness with such ruthlessness that a kind of national madness ensues. The story is about universal lies and truth, not merely the lies and the truth surrounding the witch-hunts of the various centuries, but the lies and the truth which are perceived and experienced by the individual, and particularly the individual artist.

Is the knuckleheadedness of McCarthyism behind it all? The Congressional investigations of political unorthodoxy? Yes. But is it all? Can an artist

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rely capitalized on it. His rhetoric and tactics, though extreme, were well within the already established framework of cold war politics" (Miller & Nowak 29). Fear establishes its own reality, step by step, as individuals abandon their own sanity in order to be a part of the community mind, even if that community mind is stricken with terror. We see this immediately in the play, as Parris begins to elaborate on what he saw, or what he thinks he saw, in the woods: "I cannot blink what I saw, Abigail, for my enemies will not blink it. I saw a dress lying on the grass . . . Aye, a dress. And I thought I saw --- someone naked running through the trees!" Abigail challenges him: "No one was naked! You mistake yourself, uncle!" Parris responds with anger: "I saw it! . . . Whatever abomination you have done, give me all of it now, for I dare not be taken unaware when I go before them down there" (Miller 11). We hear echoes of McCarthyism throughout such lines --- the fear of the man who must testify before the inquisitors, the willingness to accept their reality, his own gradually growing madness as he imagines something one moment, is far from certain about what he has seen, and then the next moment is defending his imagined cl

Category: Literature - M