A Study of Literary Spokespeople in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible"
            
             Arthur Miller wrote many dramas in which he analyzed human behavior in society. One of his more famous dramas included The Crucible (1953), a story about the paranoia and conspiracy of the Salem witch trials. During the 1950s, the United States of America was in fear of hidden Communists who may have been trying to destroy the American society. Senator Joe McCarthy made it his duty to find and root out these Communists within the United States of America. Miller wrote The Crucible in response to this climate of fear. It was The Crucible and other actions that caused Arthur Miller to appear before the House of Un-American Activities Committee in 1956. Although most of Arthur Miller's dramas took place in a familial setting, he made his reputation for dealing with contemporary political and moral issues in these dramas. According to Tom F. Driver in Contemporary Literary Criticism, "Miller [wrote] about important issues of the time period and [incorporated] them into his writing" (215). Arthur Miller used his characters in The Crucible as literary spokespeople to deliver his ideology on the McCarthy trials while seamlessly combining his criticism of the trials and a brilliant drama.
             John Proctor in The Crucible was a direct parallel to Miller's self and his ideology. John Proctor was a man living in Salem, Massachusetts who was wrongfully accused of being associated with the devil. Miller was not a Communist, but he did commit some Communistic actions. Raymond Williams in Modern Critical Views believes that "Arthur Miller [was] a traditional figure, but his works [had] an independence of occasion which [contrasted] very markedly with this alternative American tradition" (8). John Proctor was not infatuated with the devil, but he committed an ungodly sin, an affair. According to Ronald Hayman in Contemporary L...