A parrallel between HUAC and the Crucible

Essay by ju_f2fCollege, UndergraduateA-, April 2004

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Throughout the history of humanity, there are many examples of horrible and completely hideous crimes. While many of the crimes committed were pushed by the desire for power of some persons (mostly men: Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Josef Stalin and Idi Amin Dada are good examples), others were realized in the name of God, as the ones who planned them say (all the wars among different religions and, more recently, Osama Bin Laden). It is well known that the "big names" of these crimes had a very strong ability to manipulate people. I think that one of the things they were very good at is that they could manipulate many thousands of people to make them accept to be complitely submitted and believe that what they were about to commit was not a crime but something that had to be done. In this essay, we will discuss two crimes that are very similar in the way that the governements in control were very good at directing the population into the ideas they wanted them to believe in, and in having them act the way they wanted them to.

The first situation is the witch trials of Salem that took place in the 1690s (as reported by Arthur Miller in The Crucible), and the second is the massive anti-communism movement that took place in the United-States between 1947 and 1954. By looking at the facts found in the play, and by looking at the history of the anti-communism movement , we will make the parrallels between these two major crimes against freedom of expression.

Arthur Miller's play is written in a way that really shows the parrallels between the Salem witch trials and McCarthyism of the mid 50s. This is because Miller wrote this play during the crisis...