The Crucible and McCarthyism
Key Questions:
1. What caused the mass hysteria of McCarthyism?
2. Why was Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible so
controversial in the 1950s?
Political situation
behind
the Production of
The Crucible
McCarthyism and the
Anti-Communist Fervor
in the 1950s America
Deep-seated fear and
paranoia of the 1950s
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After the end of WW II, America became
locked in political rivalry with Communist
Soviet Union. This is, in a nutshell, was
known as the Cold War.
The Cold War witness the two superpowers
locked in an arms race, which further created
an international mood of suspicion and
fear.
In June 1950, when communist China began
to expand into Southeast Asia, America
embarked on the Korean War in an attempt
to stem the tide of Communism in Asia.
American virtue threatened
by an insidious enemy?
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This conflict had an enormous effect on the
political climate within the United States.
Political, social and business leaders were
increasingly concerned that communism
threatened the American “way of life.”
This so-called Red Scare contributed to
widespread paranoia.
In this tense era, American federal workers were
all required to take loyalty oaths to pledge their
allegiance to America, and the U.S. government
established loyalty boards to investigate reports
of left-wing communist sympathizers.
Reign of Terror Unleashed by
Senator McCarthy
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This intense fear that communists were
infiltrating America eventually led to the rise of
Senator Joseph McCarthy, the most
prominent figure in the House of Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) which was
established to scrutinize possible communist
suspects and uncover their subversive
infiltration into American life.
McCarthy’s highly controversial investigations
were aimed particularly at university teachers,
artists, trade unionists, and anyone
suspected of left-wing sympathies, which
showed his deep-seated fear of the
intellectual’s power and influence.
Miller called this “the artist-hating brutality”.
Fear and Hysteria: A Demand for
Ideological Purity
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HUAC asked the accused to confess, and prove their
innocence by naming others.
As people began to realize that they might be condemned
as Communists regardless of their innocence, many
“cooperated,” attempting to save themselves through false
confessions, thus creating the image that the United
States was overrun with Communists and perpetuating
the hysteria.
This policy resulted in a whirlwind of accusations. There
were many suicides.
Those who were revealed, falsely or legitimately, as
communists, and those who refused to incriminate their
friends, saw their careers suffer, as they were blacklisted
from potential jobs for many years afterward.
A Closer look at Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy may have been just a
senator from Wisconsin, but from about
1950 to 1954, he was one of the most
powerful and feared men in the United
States. McCarthy played off of a
building paranoia of communist
infiltration into the United States and
exploited people’s fears in order to gain
power. Anyone who spoke out against
him was labeled a communist and thus
was essentially committing career
suicide. He even went as far as to rid
the libraries of any novels he deemed
anti-American. McCarthy manipulated
the public’s fear in order to achieve the
only thing he cared about: power.
McCarthyism and Miller’s The Crucible
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The liberal entertainment industry, in which Miller worked,
was one of the chief targets of these “witch hunts.”
Among the accused, some caved in; others, like Miller,
refused to give in to questioning.
Here is Miller’s response to HUAC’s questioning:
“When I say this I want you to understand that I am not protecting
the Communists or the Communist Party. I am trying to and will
protect my sense of myself. I could not use the name of
another person and bring trouble on him. I take responsibility for
everything I have done but I cannot take responsibility for another
human being”….
“Nobody wants to be a hero... but in every man there is
something he cannot give up and still remain himself - a core, an
identity, a thing that is summed up for him by the sound of his
own name on his own ears. If he gives that up, he becomes a
different man, not himself.”
McCarthyism and Miller’s The Crucible
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However, one of his close friends, Elia Kazan, caved in,
and gave Miller’s name to the committee. Miller was fined
and given a suspended prison sentence.
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Extremely depressed about his friend’s inability to stand up
to the committee, Miller drove north to Salem,
Massachusetts, to begin his research on The Crucible,
which would be another community rocked by hysteria,
the betrayal of friends under pressure, and one man’s
refusal to name names in order to save his own skin.
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The Salem Witch trials had fascinated him long before he
saw their possibility for McCarthyism.
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But now, the lunacy of McCarthyism and the terror of
Salem had merged into one central image, in which the
average citizen was willing to accept insanity as a routine.
McCarthyism and Miller’s The Crucible
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It was against this sociopolitical
background of fear, anguish, guilt
and hysteria that Miller wrote The
Crucible, hoping to show the sin of
public terror and to capture the
wild irrationality of all these
events.
He admitted that he wrote this play
out of desperation, “motivated in
some great part by the paralysis
that had set in among many liberals
who, despite their discomfort with
the inquisitors’ violations of civil
rights, were fearful, and with good
reason, of being identified as covert
Communists if they should protest
too strongly.”
McCarthyism and Miller’s The Crucible
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“I had known of the Salem witch hunt for many years
before ‘McCarthyism’ had arrived and it had always
remained in inexplicable darkness to me…
“When I looked into it now, however, it was with the
contemporary situation at my back, particularly the
mystery of the handing over of conscience which
seemed to me the central and informing fact of the
time…
“The central impulse for writing was not the social,
but the interior psychological question ... of that
guilt residing in Salem which the hysteria merely
unleashed, but did not create.”
Commenting on McCarthyism, he wrote,
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“It was not only the rise of ‘McCarthyism’ that
moved me, but something which seemed
much more weird and mysterious. It was the
fact that a political, objective, knowledgeable
campaign from the far right was capable of
creating not only a terror, but a new
subjective reality, a veritable mystique
which was gradually assuming even a holy
resonance…
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…The wonder of it all struck me that so
practical and picayune a cause, carried
forward by such manifestly ridiculous
men, should be capable of paralyzing
thought itself, and worse, causing to
billow up such persuasive clouds of
‘mysterious’ feelings within people. It
was as though the whole country had
been born anew, without a memory even
of certain elemental decencies which a
year or two earlier no one would have
imagined could be altered, let alone
forgotten…
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“…Astounded, I watched men passed me
by without a nod whom I had known
rather well for years; and again, the
astonishment was produced by my
knowledge, which I could not give up, that
the terror in these people was been
knowingly planned and consciously
engineered, and yet that all they knew
was terror. That so interior and subjective
an emotion could have been so manifestly
created from without was a marvel to me.
It underlies every word in The Crucible.
Arthur Miller, Collected Plays (1957)
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“If I hadn’t written The
Crucible,” Miller said, “that
period would have been
unregistered in our literature
on any popular level…”
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The Crucible is the work that
Miller feels “proudest”
because, as he puts it, “I
made something lasting out
of a violent but brief
turmoil.”
The Crucible: Then and Now
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At the time of its first performance on Broadway in
January of 1953, critics and cast alike perceived The
Crucible as a direct attack on McCarthyism.
George Nathan: As a sermon and propaganda it was
acceptable; as a drama, it failed.
Walter Kerr: Characters in The Crucible were merely
mouthpieces for Miller’s politics; they were no more
than puppets serving Miller’s own political agenda.
In the eyes of the public, the play seemed to confirm
Miller’s reputation as a dangerous man.
Many reviewers and playgoers believed that viewing and
approving this play might taint them as sympathetic to
communism. People in those highly charged times had
lost their jobs for less.
The Crucible: Then and Now
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Commenting on the hostility of the audience, Miller
writes that “as the theme of the play was revealed, an
invisible sheet of ice formed over their heads, thick
enough to skate on. In the lobby at the end, people with
whom I had some fairly close professional
acquaintanceships passed me by as though I was
invisible.”
The play’s popularity did not grow until the Red Scare
waned.
Today’s audiences, long past the McCarthy paranoia,
enjoy the universal themes that the drama embodies.
Conclusion
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The author, Arthur Miller, made a conscious
attempt to link the two ideas – the Salem witch
trials, 1692, and McCarthyism of the 1950’s.
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The parallelism of the two historical times makes
one aware of the insidious results of the mass
hysteria that characterized both time periods.
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Literature is a form of expression that is
sometimes designed to enlighten us of our past
mistakes in the hopes that we can learn from
them and not repeat them in our future. The fear
of the unknown can be a powerful, negative
emotion. Let’s hope that it is within our power to
control and that such history will not be repeated.
Questions…
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Why was there a fear of communism and communist
subversion after World War II?
Were these fears justified?
Who did McCarthy accuse of having communist
sympathies?
How were the accused investigated?
What happened to them?
Why was Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible under such
criticism in the 1950s?
How did Arthur Miller feel about McCarthyism?