1. Understanding The Crucible on an allegorical level
McCarthyism
Understanding The Crucible on an allegorical level

2. The Cold War in America
At the end of World War II, the United States and the USSR emerged as the world’s major powers. They also became involved in the Cold War, a state of hostility between the two nations.
Many Americans feared not only Communism around the world but also disloyalty at home.
A lot of Americans thought the Soviets got the atomic bomb by using spies. It was charged that secret agents, working under cover, had stolen our secrets and given them to the Enemy. Even worse, these spies supposedly were hardly ever Russians themselves, but often American citizens, the kind of people you see every day on the street and hardly even notice.
A Communist could be anybody. To many people in 1953, a Communist was a frightening figure.

3. Joseph McCarthy
Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin gained power by accusing others.
In February 1950, a few months after the USSR detonated its first atomic device, McCarthy claimed to have a list of 205 Communists who worked in the State Department.
Although his accusations remained unsupported and a Senate committee labeled them “a fraud and a hoax,” McCarthy won a national following.

4. HUAC ( )
Congress began to investigate suspicions of disloyalty. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) sought to expose Communist influence in American life.
Beginning in the late 1940s, the committee called witnesses and investigated the entertainment industry. Prominent film directors, professors, teachers, actors, and screenwriters who refused to cooperate were imprisoned on contempt charges.
As a result of the HUAC investigations, the people were blacklisted.

5. The HUAC and Hollywood
HUAC investigated communism within Hollywood, calling a number of playwrights (including Arthur Miller), directors and actors known for left-wing views to testify.
Some of these, including film director Elia Kazan, testified for the committee to avoid prison sentences
The Hollywood Ten, a group of entertainers, refused to testify and were convicted of contempt and sentenced to up to one year in prison.

6. The McCarran Act (1950) Formal name: The Internal Security Act
Requires communist organizations to register with the Subversive Activities Control Board
Authorizes the arrest of suspect persons during national emergency
Six concentration camps built for this purpose

7. The Immigration and Nationality Act (1952)
Another McCarran-authored law
Barred people who were deemed either “subversive” or “homosexual” from becoming citizens or even visiting the U.S.
Power to deport immigrants who were members of the Communist Party, even if they were citizens
In effect until 1973

8. The Hollywood Ten
These industry workers called before the HUAC to testify about their ties to communism knew they had three options.
They could claim they were not and never had been members of the Communist Party
They could admit or claim membership and then be forced to name other members
Or they could refuse to answer any questions (which is the choice they made).

9. Blacklisting Over 300 entertainers were
placed on a blacklist for possible communist views and were thus forbidden to work for major Hollywood studios (many of these were writers who worked under pseudonyms).
Arthur Miller was one of
those blacklisted.
Being blacklisted effectively ended your career.

10. AFTERMATH
McCarthy’s influence continued until 1954, when the Senate censured him for abusing his colleagues. His career collapsed.
Fears of subversion continued. Communities banned books; teachers, academics, civil servants, and entertainers lost jobs; unwarranted attacks ruined lives.

11. HOW IT WORKED
Even if you had no Communism in your own past, you could easily be in the same position as Arthur Miller- you knew someone who did. That was more than enough to get you in trouble with Senator McCarthy and similar investigators.
McCarthy or his aides might say:
“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?”
No.
“Do you know anyone who is or was a Communist?”
McCarthy holds up some cards. “We have the names of people who have already confessed and you stand accused.”

12. HOW IT WORKED
Your name came up in connection with their testimony. Why do you suppose that is?”
I Don’t Know
Have you signed anything, donated any money, said anything to anybody that might sound suspicious?
They won’t let you go until you make up for it in some way. So you tell them about your friend who’s never home on Tuesday nights, or anyone you know who’s been acting a little odd the last few weeks.
You name names, and they let you go.
Afterward no one wants anything to do with you. You were called in to testify, there had to be a reason. You must be a Communist, or at least have been working for them.

13. What does “crucible” mean?
a vessel of a very refractory material (as porcelain) used for melting a substance that requires a high degree of heat
"We burn a hot fire here, it melts down all concealment.“ Judge Danforth
a severe test
a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development

14. ARTHUR MILLER’S ROLE
Miller admitted to the HUAC that he had attended meetings, but denied that he was a Communist.
He had attended four or five writer's meetings sponsored by the Communist Party in 1947, supported a Peace Conference at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and signed many appeals and protests.
Refusing to name others who had associated with leftist or suspected Communist groups, Miller was cited for contempt of Congress in 1952 and blacklisted in 1957.

15. Miller’s Words
“McCarthy's power to stir fears of creeping Communism was not entirely based on illusion, of course; the paranoid, real or pretended, always secretes its pearl around a grain of fact.”
“McCarthy—brash and ill-mannered but to many authentic and true—boiled it all down to what anyone could understand: we had "lost China" and would soon lose Europe as well, because the State Department—staffed, of course, under Democratic Presidents—was full of treasonous pro-Soviet intellectuals. It was as simple as that.”

16. Why Miller Wrote the Play
“I wished for a way to write a play that would show that the sin of public terror is that it divests man of conscience, of himself. 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. Consequently, the structure reflects that understanding, and it
centers in John, Elizabeth, and Abigail.”

17. His Involvement in the Hearings
"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. Conscience was no longer a private matter but one of state administration. I saw men handing conscience to other men
and thanking other men for the opportunity of doing so.”

18. Miller’s Tragic Hero Modern men lack heroism
Miller’s heroes are not noble in the classical sense nor are they “great men” but instead “common”
Willy Loman (Death of a Salesman)
John Proctor
Miller’s hero is on a quest for personal dignity
The hero must possess integrity and sense of character
Tragic flaws  Proctor = Adulterer
You become heroic by evaluating yourself and purging (catharsis)
“Willingness to lay down your life”
Final realization is an act to preserve self