Review of Arthur Miller'S 'The Crucible' and the American Red Scare essay
A partially fictionalized stage interpretation of the Salem witch trials, Arthur Miller's The Crucible was written to resemble the actions of the U.S. government during: ~ Dive deep into Arthur Miller's The Crucible with extensive analysis, commentary, and discussion “ Arthur Miller is a Problem playwright in both senses of the word,” wrote Walter Kerr of the Herald Tribune, who called the play “a step back toward a mechanical parable.” That evening, Miller began writing The Crucible, one of his most famous plays, which featured the Salem Witch trials as an allegory for Senator Joseph McCarthy's oppressive tactics. The word fear can be defined as: a disturbing emotion aroused by impending danger or pain. In his play The Crucible, Arthur Miller addresses the fear embedded in Puritan society. According to the Public Broadcasting Service, "the Puritans lived in a constant state of mental anguish, looking for signs of God's favor or wrath." Arthur Miller's 1953 allegorical play The Crucible draws chilling parallels between the destructive nature of McCarthyist fear in America and the mass hysteria of the century's Salem witch trials, which exposed conflicting ideologies through the manipulation of unfounded fear within an endangered community.