1. The Crucible
Arthur Miller

3. Firstly, what is a crucible?
a vessel or melting pot
A test of the most decisive kind, a severe trial
crucible = a vessel in which substances are heated to high temperatures, the impure elements being melted away to leave the pure elements behind.

4. The Crucible is . . . Puritanism + Witchcraft McCarthyism
Arthur Miller

5. Puritanism
Christian faith that originated in England during the early 1600s

6. The Puritans
They were a religious group in England who had very strict rules about how people should behave. Eventually, the English people got sick of them, and so many Puritans fled to the US to escape religious persecution.
They settled in North America in 1620.

7. They brought with them the hope of religious freedom but instead became embroiled in hysteria over the existence of witches.
They had been persecuted in their native England, but they created a theocracy and eventually persecuted others.

8. The Puritans They firmly believed:
in the Bible; they felt that it revealed the Lord’s word, and only through it does he directly communicate to people.
They believed man could do nothing to be saved – salvation was a gift that could only come from God
Your soul was predestined from birth – you were either going to Heaven or Hell. They constantly searched for hints as to what path they were on.

9. The Puritans
Women were considered subservient to men, and women were more likely to consort with the Devil than men
The church was the centre of society
They also wanted to purge evil from the world. One way to do this  confront and eradicate witchcraft.

10. Witchcraft in Salem
Like all Puritans, the residents of Salem Village believed in witches and in witchcraft.
They believed that witchcraft was “entering into a compact with the devil in exchange for certain powers to do evil.”
They considered witchcraft both a sin and a crime; it was a very serious accusation, which was carefully and thoroughly investigated.

11. Most of those accused of being witches were women.
Many were healers and used plants to heal people.
Many were without family, and this made them easy targets.
They were people who did not fit in with the mainstream for some reason.

12. One of the ways most witches were accused was with the use of “spectral evidence.” If someone said they had seen the accused with the devil in a dream, or that the accused had visited them in the night, or had hurt them, it was taken as evidence that the devil was at work. Twenty were executed, between 175 and 200 were jailed.

13. Those accused of being witches were most often found guilty
Those accused of being witches were most often found guilty. Sometimes they were sentenced to be tied to a rock dunked in a pond, and if they sank, they were declared innocent. Innocent. If they somehow survived the dunking, they were obviously witches, and they were executed.
Most of those found guilty of witchcraft were hanged.
One man was pressed to death with rocks because he refused to plead guilty or innocent, ensuring that his sons still inherited his lands.

14. The Salem Witch Trials

15. How did it start?
In 1692, several girls in the village of Salem, Massachusetts, became intrigued when a West Indian servant told them stories of magic and voodoo from her native land.
Bored and restricted by the oppressive Puritan life, the girls slipped into the woods one night and “conjured” love charms and hexes.
One girl, Betty Parris, slipped into unconsciousness when her father caught them. She wouldn’t wake up, and this started the discussion of witchcraft. To avoid punishment, the girls created the story of the “witches” who made them dance and conjure the spells.

16. Map of the United States of America

17. Map of Massachusetts

18. Witchcraft in Salem
The witchcraft hysteria began in Salem, Massachusetts, in early 1692.
Reverend Samuel Parris’s daughter and Abigail Williams started having fits of convulsion, screaming, and hallucination.
A doctor examined the girls and concluded that the only explanation for these bizarre behaviors was witchcraft.

19. Witchcraft in Salem
A recently published book of the time detailed the symptoms of witchcraft; the girls’ fits were much like those described in the book.
Therefore, the Puritans of Salem were quick to believe the doctor’s diagnosis.

20. Witchcraft in Salem
The girls pointed fingers at Tituba (the Parris’ slave), Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborn, which sparked a witch hunt.

21. Witchcraft in Salem
During the next eight months of terror, more than 150 people were imprisoned for witchcraft.
By the time court was dismissed, 27 people had been convicted, 19 hanged, and 1 pressed to death.
The hysteria that snowballed in Salem reveals how deep the belief in the supernatural ran in colonial America.

22. Why did it happen?
It began as a way for the oppressed girls to avoid being punished.
It then became an ideal way to get revenge on anyone whom you disliked.
People started accusing their neighbors of being witches so they could steal their farm land.
People accused others of being witches if they wanted to steal their husbands or wives or possessions.

23. The Witch Trials
Numerous reasons have been offered since to explain the original symptoms the girls showed, including hysteria, hallucinations brought on by food poisoning, and various diseases.
There is also no one reason as to why things got so out of control – desire for land and power, strict religious beliefs, and a tightly controlled society are just some of the explanations.

24. So…
Why did Arthur Miller, almost 400 years after these events took place, decide to write about them?

25. Basically, he saw a strong parallel between the witch-hunts in Salem, and what was happening in America in the 1950s. However, this time, the hunt was for Communists.

26. The Cold War
Back in the 20th century, there were two world superpowers: the USA and the USSR.
In 1946, the USSR acquired nuclear weapons. This was effectively the start of the Cold War between the USSR and the USA – an undeclared war not of bloody fighting but of threat and counter threat.

27. Capitalism v Communism
America represented the ideology of capitalism, while the USSR represented communism.
In 1949, China became a Communist country, and American paranoia about Communism reached crisis proportions.

28. Fear of Communism
Communism is a political and economic system in which the major productive resources in a society—such as mines, factories, and farms—are owned by the public or the state, and wealth is divided among citizens equally or according to individual need.
In America, and in Australia to a lesser extent, the common perception was that the Communists were “an empire of Evil”.
The struggle was for control of trouble spots. On one side were the good (the US, with it’s freedom loving, democratic traditions), while on the other, was the bad (the USSR and China, with repressive police states, human rights abuses and lack of freedom). This is how it was portrayed in the Western media.

29. McCarthy
Into an American society that was extremely paranoid that the Communists were going to take over the world, a Senator named Joseph McCarthy rose to prominence.

30. McCarthy
He made a speech in February 1950, where he claimed to have a list of more than 200 Communist party members who were working for the US State Department.
The attempt to ‘weed out’ Communists had been going on before McCarthy, and continued after him, but he became symbolic of the era, and his involvement coined the term “McCarthyism”.

31. The Red Scare
He held hearings where people were demanded to give names of other Communists in order for leniency. People were afraid they might be named Communists, and it was called The Red Scare. (“red” is a term used for Communists)

32. McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the term used to describe a period of intense suspicion in the United States during the early 1950s.
A special House Committee on Un-American Activities was formed to investigate allegations of communism.
During this period, people from all walks of life became the subjects of aggressive “witch hunts” often based on inconclusive, questionable evidence.

33. The Hunt for Communists
This whole period of United States history was characterised by suspicion, paranoia and hysteria. People were encouraged to turn on each other, and to name suspected Communists.

34. McCarthyism
Persons accused of being communists were often denied employment in both the public and private sector.
In the film industry alone, over 300 actors, writers, and directors were denied work in the U.S.
American writer, Arthur Miller, was one of those alleged to have been “blacklisted.”

35. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
This committee was formed in 1938, and its focus soon shifted to identifying Communists.
Its most notorious investigation was into the Hollywood film industry. Actors, writers, and directors were called to testify about the Communist beliefs of themselves and their colleagues.

36. The Hollywood Ten
Initially, ten guys refused to answer under the First Amendment. They were sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress.

37. Blacklists
All of this investigation and suspicion led to ‘blacklists’. No-one every really admitted that these lists existed, but what it meant was that hundreds of people working in the entertainment industry were denied work because they had been accused of being Communists, or refused to cooperate with inquiries.

38. Who was blacklisted? Some of the people blacklisted include:
Charlie Chaplin (actor)
Orson Welles (actor, author, director) (Citizen Kane)
Leonard Bernstein (composer) (West Side Story)
And…
Arthur Miller

39. Consequences Hundreds were imprisoned
Tens of thousands lost their jobs
Some of these people did have a past or present connection with the Communist Party, however, may not have meant any harm to the United States at all.
For most, the evidence linking them to the Communist Party was dubious at best.

40. McCarthyism Edward R. Murrow
McCarthy’s influence finally faltered in 1954 when a famous CBS newsman, Edward R. Murrow, aired an investigative news report which revealed McCarthy as dishonest in his speeches and abusive in his interrogation of witnesses.
The public was finally made aware of how McCarthy was ruining the reputations of many individuals through false accusations of communism.
Edward R. Murrow

41. Comparison between the Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism:
Suspension of rational judgment
People who challenged the authority of the court soon found themselves under suspicion of guilt
Conscience was no longer a private matter but one of state administration

42. Arthur Miller and The Crucible
Arthur Miller was in the middle of all of this hysteria about Communism.
He saw clear parallels between that and the hysteria over witches that had existed 4 centuries earlier.
He wrote The Crucible as an allegory to illustrate how ridiculous the paranoia about Communism in the US was.

43. The Crucible was Arthur Miller’s way of protesting the House Unamerican Activities Committee hearings. He compared the Communist hearings to the witch hunts of Salem, where gossip, rumors, and fear were evidence enough to convict people.
The term “witch hunt” now applies to any activity where people are looking for a scapegoat or where they are using accusations to get revenge or to get personal gain or attention.

44. Arthur Miller 1915-2005 American Playwright and Writer
In 1953 he wrote The Crucible, which uses the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 to attack the anti-communist “witch hunts” of the 1950s.
He believed the hysteria surrounding the witch craft trials in Puritan New England paralleled the climate of McCarthyism – Senator Joseph McCarthy’s obsessive quest to uncover communist party infiltration of American institutions.
After the publication of the The Crucible, Miller himself was investigated for possible associations with the communist party.
He refused to give information regarding his colleagues and was found guilty of contempt of court. His sentence was later overturned.

45. It’s really two stories in one:
One: a dramatisation of the real-life events of Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1690s
and
Two: a comment on how ludicrous the hunt for Communists in the 1950s was.
Through this play, he makes clear comments about American government and society.

46. The Crucible does three important things:
Illustrates the belief that history repeats itself
Through the retelling of the Salem witch trials during the Red Scare of the 50s, The Crucible helped people to understand that often in life we are unable to see our moment in history very easily unless we are aided by earlier examples, or, in other words, unless we are able to make a connection between what is going on now and what has already happened.
Shows the danger of mob mentality—the kind of thinking/action where a large number of people act on poor information or they act using emotions, rather than logic.

47. Themes in The Crucible Hypocrisy
Individual vs. the community (unity and exclusion)
Authority
Greed
Justice vs. retribution and revenge
Godliness vs. worldliness
Ignorance vs. wisdom
The Puritan Myth
Order vs. Individual Freedom
It is also a story about the struggle between good and evil inside the heart of one man.

48. REFLECTION (150 + words)
Based on what you’ve heard about the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy hearings, write a paragraph detailing any connections you see between the two occurrences.
Why do you think Arthur Miller chose to use the period of history (1692) that he chose? Why didn’t he just write about the Red Scare and the McCarthy trials?
Are there any differences between the two occurrences (other than the obvious things, such as time periods and clothes, etc.).
How do you think both of these “witch hunts” were stopped eventually?