<aside> 💡 Arthur Miller, born 1915, published his dramatic play, The Crucible’, in 1953. The play, which chronicles the Salem Witch Trials of the seventeenth century, serves as an allegory for the widespread fear and hysteria of Communist infiltration underpinning the Red Scare and McCarthyism.
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This modern day, metaphorical Witch Hunt led the blacklisting and imprisonment of many of those involved in the film industry, some of whom Miller was close with. Miller published this play with the hope of illustrating the parallels between the Salem Witch Hunts and McCarthyism and of emphasizing the serious consequences of baseless rumours and fear-mongering.
In its depiction of Puritanism, The Crucible most resembles Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Both works show that not only is Puritanism harsh and strict, but that this harshness makes it blind, cruel, hypocritical, and destructive. Hawthorne was actually a descendant of the notorious Judge Hathorne from the witch trials. Hawthorne added the "w" to his name to distance himself from the judge
The Real Salem Witch Trials. In his depiction of the witch trials, Miller took many major departures from fact. For instance, John Proctor was nearly 60 and Abigail Williams only 11 at the time of the witch trials. Any affair between the two is highly unlikely, to say the least. Miller was always open about the liberties he took with history, saying that he was writing "a fictional story about an important theme.”