ected of communist activities.
             The mass hysteria brought about by the witchcraft scare in The Crucible leads to the upheaval in people's perception of right and wrong, fogging their sense of true justice. At the time I wrote The Crucible in the early 1950's, the United States was experiencing a modern "witch hunt" of its own. Senator Joseph McCarthy, provoked by the Cold War, became fearfully convinced that Communists, or "Reds," were polluting American government. He intended to hunt them out, force them to confess, and make them name their associates, almost as the Salem judges had done. In fact, the character of Danforth is based on McCarthy himself. There is a great parallel between the witch trials and the "Red Scare," both created frenzy among the public, involved people going against each other to prove their own innocence, and sought to hunt out those who rebelled against the dominant values of the time. My own involvement in the McCarthy "witch hunt" significantly influenced my decision to write The Crucible. I also had the misfortune to appear before the HUAC in 1956 accused of being a Communist. I admitted to having attended a Communist meeting years earlier to learn about their views. I was asked to name the others at the meeting but refused, saying, "I am trying to and I will protect my sense of myself." My reaction to this cross-examination is similar to that of John Proctor, who represents my most important belief that righteousness is maintained if one's moral sense is kept. I was subsequently convicted of contempt, but the conviction was later appealed and reversed. I wrote about McCarthyism indirectly by using the parallel of the Salem witch hunts to protect myself at the time since I did not want to make it obvious.
             My style is very simple, although I used archaic sentences and words, which are nonetheless quite easy to understand. You can tell when...