![]() Throughout the play, several characters are charged with witchcraft, some of them hanged, and some forced to confess. Miller writes an allegory of the event, focusing on the helplessness of the rational intellectual against the irrational justice system. However, it is most importantly language through which insanity and irrationality manifest themselves and assume the role of reason. In addition, Miller’s play is ironic due to the Puritan intolerance of stage performances, since the depiction of the trials mirrors a spectacle. It is not surprising that Miller chose the Salem witch-hunt trials for a comparison with McCarthyism, because they prove how insanity can turn into both a discourse of power and a social norm. In 1953, Miller responded to McCarthyism through The Crucible, a play that depicts a similar craze in the justice system, but from a different period of American history: the Salem witch-hunt trials in the Massachusetts Bay Colony that started in 1692. ![]() ![]() ![]() McCarthyism is marked with ungrounded accusations, Red Scare, the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and the Hollywood blacklist, which included several celebrated people in American film production, like Arthur Miller. ![]()
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