Crucible
Today, you wouldn't even use the word "caught." You might think these girls were strange, but you'd hardly call the cops on them. But it's 1692, and Salem isn't just an ordinary small town; it's a religious community of the strictest kind. The people and their laws are as harsh as the Massachusetts winter. When two of the girls pass out from fright and can't be revived, the others find themselves in serious trouble. Women who dance with the Devil are witches; and witches, when they are caught, are hanged. To get themselves out of their predicament, the girls try to spread the blame around. But the blame-spreading gets out of hand, and before long the whole town is in a panic, everyone accusing everyone else of witchcraft. Nineteen people will be hanged before the madness is stopped. Well, you say, people were superstitious then. Nothing like that could happen today. Maybe so, but in the early 1950s, at the time The Crucible was written, a similar kind of hunt was taking place, not for witches, but for Communists. Today it bears the harmless-sounding name of the McCarthy Hearings on Un-American Activities, but for the people who got caught up in it--some of them our parents and grandparents--this "witch-hunt" was anything but harml
One of the most popular TV shows in 1953 was "I Led Three Lives. We can think of the Salem witchcraft as a kind of fire which, once started, could not be quenched until it had burned itself out. It was charged that secret agents, working under cover, had stolen our secrets and given them to the Enemy. But before he can leave, the marshalls come to arrest Elizabeth: Abigail has "cried her out. " Miller hadn't changed a word in the script. It wasn't until after the war, when--as so often happens--the victor's turned against each other, that Communism began to be considered a very serious threat. Why do you suppose that is?" You say you don't know, but you can tell that no one believes you. Arthur Miller had drawn a lot of attention to himself, and he soon got into trouble. Astounded, I watched men pass me by without a nod whom I had known rather well for years. In fact, when witchcraft first broke out, many believed it to be the beginning of Armageddon, the great battle between Darkness and Light that would signal the end of the world. "It was not only the rise of 'McCarthyism' that moved me," he writes, "but something which seemed much more weird and mysterious. McCarthy claimed America was in great danger from a Communist conspiracy to take over the world. In the next few days other girls--including Mary Warren--are added to their number, and within a week they have "cried out" (as they called it) 14 "witches.
Common topics in this essay:
Arthur Miller,
Abigail Williams,
Darkness Light,
Communist McCarthy,
Russians Communists,
,
Arthur Miller's,
Un-American Activities,
Reverend Hale,
Colony Puritans,
arthur miller,
abigail williams,
john proctor,
mary warren,
salem 1692,
called testify,
un-american activities,
communist party,
rebecca nurse,
god's visible kingdome,
joe mccarthy,
|
Acceptance Essays
