FREE ESSAY ON THE CRUCIBLE

THE CRUCIBLE

The Crucible 
When Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, it was during a time when communism was a threat
to the American way of life. This particular era was sparked by Joseph Raymond McCarthy's
idea about communism in the United States' government. This was a period of political
spitefulness and mass hysteria.
In 1950, McCarthy had said that there were communists in the Department of State. This
accusation was never proven, and the public didn't pay attention to McCarthy's words in
the early years of this era. During the year of 1953, McCarthy became chairman of the
Senate subcommittee on investigations. Throughout the following years he continued to
make his ideas about the government known. In 1954 he accused the secretary of the army
of concealing foreign espionage activities. McCarthy started investigating all of his
accusations, but was brought up on charges of improper means of investigation and the
charges were dropped. One will see in the play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, that the
United States basically despised Russia during the 1950's because Russia was a communist
state. The United States named Russia The Devil (according to the play), because of their
communistic ways and dictatorship over the people. The necessity of the Devil may become
evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to whip
men into surrender to a particular church or church-state. Besides what Miller's idea of
what communism is, he also has an idea that if one is not communist, or against
communism, then they are for the United States government, and if a U.S. citizen does not
have the same reactions towards capitalistic doings as the rest of the country, then that
citizen is considered to be communist, according to Miller. In the countries of the
Communist ideology, all resistance of any import is linked to the totally malign
capitalist, and in America any man who is not reactionary in his views is open to the
charges of alliance with the Red Hell. This is a very important statement because of how
it links the views of Miller to the accusations of McCarthy. Basically by linking these
two together, one can come to the conclusion that the United States is a hypocrite
(according to the two opinions). Arthur Miller says that the U.S. dislikes Russia because
Russia is communist, and that Russia is The Devil and Red Hell, but according to McCarthy
the U.S. itself had a government made up of communists. Then, reading more of Miller's
opinions, one can come to the conclusion that according to Miller, McCarthy is a
communist. Miller says that if one has different views then the rest of the country (like
McCarthy) then they are communist. With all of McCarthy's accusations he was clearly
against the views of the United State's government. Both McCarthy and Miller have
different views on the same subject, but when linked together, one can come up with many
different conclusions about McCarthy, Miller, the United States government.
To understand this fully you must know what The Crucible is about and the different
tragedies that occurred, and how the deterioration of Salem's social structure
precipitated the murders of many innocent people. 
Arthur Miller's depiction of the Salem witch trials in The Crucible dealt with a
community that looked like it was tightly knit and church loving. It turns out that once
Tituba starts pointing her finger at the witches, the community starts pointing their
fingers at each other. Hysteria and hidden agendas break down the social structure and
then everyone must protect themselves from the people that they thought were their
friends. The church, the legal system and the togetherness of the community died. 
Being isolated from any other group of people with different beliefs created a church led
Puritan society that was not able to accept a lot of change. The church was against the
devil, at the same time it was against such things as dancing and other premature acts.
The reputation of the family was very important to the members of the community. When the
girls were caught dancing in the woods, they lied to protect not just themselves but the
reputation of their families. They claimed that the devil took them over and influenced
them to dance. The girls also said that they saw members of the town standing with the
devil. A community living in a puritan society like Salem could easily go into a chaotic
state and have a difficult time dealing with what they consider to be the largest form of
evil. Salem's hysteria made the community lose faith in the spiritual beliefs that they
were trying to strictly enforce. The church lost many of its parishioners because the
interest of the town was now on Abigail. People wanted to know who was going to be named
next. 
The justice system is designed to protect the people that it serves but during the
trials, the accused witch had two choices, death or imprisonment. The punishment of death
was given to all people that pleaded not guilty; the other option was to plead guilty and
go to jail. John Proctor gave his view of the justice system when he said, I like not the
smell of this 'authority' (29). There were so many people executed that Hale commented,
There are orphans wandering from house to house; abandoned cattle bellow on the
highroads, the stink of rotting crops hangs everywhere...(130) Salem was turning into a
ghost town. With Abigail controlling the community, the church no longer getting the
whole town to prayer, and an unjust legal system, it was natural that the people were in
a state of total chaos. The unexplained was caused by the devil, so some members of Salem
used the unexplained to their advantage. Mrs. Putnam told the truth when she said, There
are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!(26) Rumors happened
because people did not want any blame put on to themselves. This 'passing the buck' made
people start fighting with one another. 
Abigail used her power of getting people to listen, to her advantage. This again proves
that Abigail had control of the town and the unexplained turned neighbor against
neighbor. The social breakdown in Salem was the major factor in the tragedy that took the
lives of innocent people. There was more than one tragedy in The Crucible. The first was
the murdering of innocent people, and the second was that a community that was once very
close had been broken apart. It appeared that the people of Salem were like a family but
isolation actually made them unable to adapt to a troublesome situation. If the community
could have looked passed their fear of witchcraft, then the social structure would have
been able to adapt. 
Take for example the most recent scandal in America surrounding the President. After
studying The Crucible my outlook on the scandal somewhat changed. Who was the actual bad
guy in the on-going investigation? It could have been Kenneth Starr, a Republican who
wanted Bill Clinton, a Democrat, out of office, and would take any necessary step to
achieve that plan, very similar to Abigail. It really didn't matter what Clinton did or
was doing, Starr seemed to be trying to sabotage him anyway. The whole idea that one
person could make a statement and accuse another of an unbelievable action without any
background check on the integrity of the person who said it, is inconceivable. How much
power does the average person have? As for analogies, Abigail is to the media as the
one's who were accused to be witches are to the people who the media hate. So even today,
witch hunts are still happening.