Arthur Miller
Have you ever had to choose between saving someone else or saving yourself? What things did you consider when making your decision? In this tragic play, characters must decide what it means to do the right thing. What does it mean to “do the right thing”? What difference is there, if any, between an honorable and a dishonorable sacrifice?
“The play is not reportage of any kind.... Nobody can start to write a tragedy and hope to make it reportage.... what I was doing was writing a fictional story about an important theme.” – Arthur Miller Allegory – characters in a story represent certain abstract qualities.
The "important theme" that Miller was writing about was clear to many people in 1953 at the play's opening: they too were experiencing mass hysteria… It was written in response to Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee's crusade against supposed communist sympathizers. As with the accused witches in Salem, suspected Communists were encouraged to confess and to identify other communist sympathizers in order to save themselves.
Many “cooperated,” attempting to save themselves through false confessions, and like in Salem, this helped to fuel the hysteria. The entertainment industry was a major target. Miller was brought forth for questioning, but refused to cooperate. 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.
The man himself, ranting A modern accusation of McCarthyism … fair or unfair?
Against a backdrop of rising opposition to McCarthy in 1953, Edward R. Murrow and his See it Now producer Fred Friendly finally found an interesting angle to address McCarthy's tactics. In October 1953, they aired a See it Now program regarding the case of Milo Radulovich ( ). Radulovich, a second- generation U.S. citizen, was discharged as reserve Air Force lieutenant due to his family's alleged Communist contacts. After Murrow's program and the ensuing publicity, Radulovic received a hearing and was reinstated in the Air Force. Murrow and Friendly followed this up with their March 1954 See it Now Special on the Senator from Wisconsin himself, paying for the program's advertisement out of their own pockets. Consisting largely of excerpts from McCarthy's television appearances, this broadcast and McCarthy's televised response did much to reveal the senator's illogical, crude, and undemocratic crusade to a general public. Murrow's stature and analysis did the rest.
Murrow’s See It Now special on McCarthy from March 1954 (GNGL, chapter 11)
Have things changed since Salem?
Quick Write: Do you think something like this could this happen today? Why or why not? Try to think of an example from recent history or today.