"The Crucible can be better appreciated if the reader understands the time it was written and the nature of McCarthyism." Discuss

The plot commences in a small Puritan town of Salem, where social intolerance of unique ideas plays a major role in the community. Common opinion is determined by the few people in power, but the majorities have no control in government. The authority of state and the church as one force controls all decisions that are it considers best for the community. Because of constricted relation with religion, government becomes involved in all affairs and makes them public concerns. The continuing interference into other people’s lives creates distrust and suspicion in the society.

McCarthyism, named after Joseph McCarthy, was a period of intense anticommunism, also known as the second Red Scare, which occurred in the United States from 1948 to about 1956, when the government of the United States actively mistreated the Communist Party USA, its leadership, and others suspected of being communists.1 

The McCarthyism era received its name based on the idea of a witch-hunt. This movement backed by American’s concern of Communism. The witch hunter of this time, Joseph McCarthy who was a senator during this time. The goal of the hunt was to find communists, or anyone associated with communists. During this time people were blacklisted, an action that jeopardized a persons career. The development of the ‘blacklisting’, a term used to describe being put on a secret list which meant you were in association of the Communist Party, allowed for the dismissal of many employees. Fear increased when McCarthy, in February 1950 made a public speech claiming to have obtained a list of over two-hundred people in the State Department known to have links with the American Communist Party. Many members of Congress were frightened of McCarthy, and Congress as a whole joined in the hunt for communists. McCarthyism came to obtain a definition: 'false charges of disloyalty.2 The fear of being accused allowed McCarthy to carry out his anti-communist witch-hunt.

The author, Arthur Miller, in the Crucible make an aware attempt to link the two ideas of the Salem witch trials which were in the 1690s and the McCarthyism of the 1950’s. The parallelisms of those historical times make you aware of the chain of history that human’s experience.      

If the reader undertakes those facts in them two historical times, the reader can definitely get a ‘better’ understand the nature of McCarthyism plus the Crucible play.3

Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953 during the McCarthy period when Americans were accusing each other of Pro-Communist beliefs.  Many of Miller’s friends were being attacked as communists and in 1956; Miller himself was brought before the House of Un-American Activities Committee where he was found guilty of beliefs in communism4.  The verdict was reversed in 1957 in an appeals court.

This shows that since the writer also experience the time in which it happened, it give a more understanding so that the reader can also appreciate the book. 

Overall The Crucible as a play and a story is better appreciated through the knowledge of the past history of McCarthyism and the time it was written in. Arthur Miller combines both the past and the present for the readers to understand the book but as before, the play is ‘better’ appreciated if the reader understands the nature of McCarthyism.