How is act 3 of The Crucible Dramatically Effective?

This essay hasn't yet been marked by one of our teachers

You can view all our essays on Arthur Miller that have been Marked by Teachers

The first 200 words of this essay...

How is act 3 of The Crucible Dramatically Effective?

Since 1938 an organisation called the House Un-American Activities Committee had been in existence in America. This had the power to investigate any movement or person who apparently threatened the safety of the state. Under the chairmanship of Senator Joseph McCarthy, this committee became almost paranoid in its searching out of communist sympathisers amongst the American people in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In 1956, when the power of the committee was waning, Arthur Miller (The playwright) was summoned to appear before it. A pile of petitions with his signature was produced and he was asked to confess to signing his name.

The activities of the Committee began to be linked in Miller's mind with witchcraft trials which had taken place in the American town of Salem two centuries before. For example the committee often had in its possession lists of people attending various communist meetings, and yet it still wanted the witnesses to name names. Miller saw these public confessions as parallel with the naming of names at Salem in 1692.

In the15th century the Catholic Church began to take witchcraft seriously, and started to