Miller wrote The Crucible to expose the falseness of McCarthyism. Under the witch hunts in seventeenth-century Salem and during the McCarthy investigations of people's allegedly "unAmerican" activities, many innocent lives were ruined because of false allegations.
In The Crucible, after Abigail and Better claim they were dancing naked in the woods because they were bewitched, a witch hunt ensues, leading to more than 100 people being falsely accused of witchcraft. A mood of hysteria and irrationality takes over Salem. Reason is thrown to the wind.
Likewise, because of the Soviet incursions into Eastern Europe after World War II, a mood of hysteria gripped the United States with the fear that communist infiltrators would take over the country. Rational thinking was tossed aside. As in Salem hundreds of years earlier, a "witch hunt" followed. Many people were dragged before Senator Joseph McCarthy's Committee on Government Operations on basically no evidence to defend themselves against being so-called communists. Many people were completely innocent. Many careers were destroyed for no reason. Many other people feared McCarthy and were afraid to stand up to him, despite his blatant excesses.
Miller uses the Salem witch trials, which everyone in the 1950s agreed were based on lies and irrationality, to expose the lying and irrationality of McCarthy and to urge people to have the courage to stand up to him.
Arthur Miller was very concerned about Senator McCarthy's communist "witchhunt" during the post WW II years. (I put that in quotes because, although it has always been held that McCarthy was incorrect about all his accuasations, there is new evidence that he was correct about some/most of what he alleged.) During this period he wrote an adaptation of Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" which portrays the heroic efforts of a doctor to let the people know that the spas, source of their town's fame and income, is harmful.
Miller was fascinated by the heroic individual who stood up to the masses. Perhaps more to the point, he opposed the tendency and power of the group to turn on the individual in a witchhunt. Both "The Crucible" and "An Enemy of the People" were written to expose McCarthyism for what Miller thought it was.
What are some similarities between The Crucible and McCarthyism?
Joe McCarthy was a senator who, in the period after WW II went on a hunt (often called, perhaps erroneously, a "witchhunt) for Americans who had ties to the Communist Party which was then seen as a real threat to the United States. He ruthlessly went after individuals, many powerful people in Washington and Hollywood, who he alleged had ties to the Party. He was disgraced and dismissed, even though history has indicated that he was correct about some/many of these individuals (there is more information to be divulged).
Miller set out to discredit McCarthy, and he did it with two plays: he wrote "The Crucible" and adapted Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" for the modern stage. The Crucible presents...
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the "heroic" figure of Proctor who represents all the individuals that Miller thought were being falsely accused and who defended their honor in the face these accusations. The same scenario presents itself in "An Enemy of the People" where the heroic Doctor Stockmann finds that the theraputic springs that are the source of the town's income are harmful and refuses to back off his assertion under the pressure of the town's people.
Both these plays, written/edited in the early 1950's, clearly support Miller's view that the heroic individual must stand up for the truth in the face of attempts to destroy the truth and are a response to the pressure that McCarthy brought on many of his friends.
What are some similarities between The Crucible and McCarthyism?
This is a fantastic question. Miller wrote "The Crucible" during the McCarthy era. The play is about a man, John Proctor, who does not sacrifice his name, his dignity, in order to save his own life. Proctor does not point the finger at somebody else in order to avoid hardship. What is most interesting is that Arthur Miller himself was called before the House on Unamerican Activities Committee and asked to point the finger at communists in Miller's field. He, like Proctor in his play, refused to do so. Miller is one of my personal heroes because of this. It is a great example of life imitating art.
What does McCarthyism have in common with The Crucible?
In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy proposed the idea that there were communists in the US who were in positions of high influential power -- writers, actors, producers, politicians, etc. He decided that the best thing to do in this case was to hold trials in which these influential people would be questioned concerning their involvement in communism and would then be asked to name others who were communists. This is what was known as McCarthyism. Those who were convicted as communists were put on the "Hollywood Blacklists" and were not able to find work anywhere -- they suffered a social and political death because of it. The search for these communists was called the witch hunts. The events in 1692 in Salem, MA worked the same way but the judges were looking for witches instead of communists and instead of a social death, those convicted were actually put to death. These are the common bonds between the two.