Introduction to The Crucible

1. Introduction to The Crucible Arthur Miller

2. Arthur Miller • b. New York City, Oct. 17, 1915 • His father, Isidore Miller, was a ladies-wear manufacturer and shopkeeper who was ruined in the depression. The sudden change in fortune had a strong influence on Miller. • Miller began writing plays while a student at the University of Michigan. He had actually planned to study journalism.

3. AM and MM • Miller married the motion-picture actress Marilyn Monroe in 1956; they divorced in 1961. The two had met on the set of her movie As Young as You Feel.

4. Plays • His most famous work is Death of a Salesman (1949). • Miller condemned the American ideal of prosperity on the grounds that few can pursue it without making dangerous moral compromises. • He wrote The Crucible as a result of his being called in before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. He set the play during the Salem Witch Trials because he saw it as a parallel to the McCarthy Trials.

5. 1950s: 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 (short of direct military conflict) between the two nations. • Americans lived in a constant state of fear in the 1950s….fear of nuclear attack, fear of communist spies, etc. • This fear fueled Senator McCarthy’s “witch hunt”, or the McCarthy Trials.

6. (HUAC) • Congress began to investigate suspicions of disloyalty. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) sought to expose Communist influence in American life.

7. Joseph McCarthy • Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin gained power by accusing others of subversion. • 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. Branding the Democrats as a party of treason, he denounced his political foes as “soft on Communism” and called Truman’s loyal secretary of state, Dean Acheson, the “Red Dean.”

8. McCarthyism • McCarthyism has come to mean false charges of disloyalty. • In September 1950, goaded by McCarthy, Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act, which established a Subversive Activities Control Board to monitor Communist influence in the United States.

9. 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.

10. The HUAC and Hollywood • HUAC investigated communism within Hollywood, calling a number of playwrights, directors and actors known for left-wing views to testify. • The Hollywood Ten, a group of entertainers, refused to testify and were convicted of contempt and sentenced to up to one year in prison.

11. 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 (this would have meant perjuring themselves). • They could admit or claim membership and then be forced to name other members (and this would have meant losing their jobs both because of their former membership and their dubious position as informers). • Or they could refuse to answer any questions (which is the choice they made).

12. 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.

13. Miller admitted to the HUAC that he had attended meetings, but denied that he was a Communist. • He had attended, among others, 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.

14. Miller wrote The Crucible not simply as a straight historical play detailing the Salem witch trials. • A good deal of the information in the play misrepresents the literal events of the trial: at the time of the trial, John Proctor was sixty years old and Abigail Williams only eleven (Remember he was a playwright with ties to Hollywood). • The play is a parable for the McCarthy era, in which similar “witch hunts” occurred targeting citizens as communists rather than disciples of the devil.

15. What does “crucible” mean? • a vessel of a very refractory material (as porcelain) used for melting and calcining a substance that requires a high degree of heat • a severe test • a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development

16. The cause of the Salem Witch Trials have always been a source of interest for historians. No one is certain what caused the citizens of Salem, Massachusetts, to be swept away by the witch trials that became a part of their history. • Other neighboring communities had had similar trials, but in Salem, the citizens seemed to simply go mad. • Some contributing factors to the madness: • Puritans readily believed that Satan would attack them in order to prevent their vision of a “city-on-a-hill.” • Once the trial began, most of the accusations seemed to be motivated by greed. (One particular family group makes the majority of accusations, and the father in turn purchases their forfeited land.) • Their was a lot of animosity between those who lived in Salem proper and those who lived in the farming area outside the town.

17. The Puritans had a system of government known as a theocracy; in other words, their government was one with their church.