Miller’s The Crucible (1953), written and performed at the
height of McCarthyism in the early 1950s, contextualizes the
tragic happenings in Salem Village and Salem Town,
Massachusetts, from June through September of 1692. The
unmistakable and frightening parallels between events at
Salem and the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC) hearings present a powerful allegory for our
contemporary world, especially the horrendous events of 9/11
and their aftermath. The Crucible employs the historical events
of the Salem Witch Trials to develop a powerful critique of
moments in human history when reason and fact became
clouded by irrational fears and the desire to place the blame
for society’s failures and problems on certain individuals or
groups. While The Crucible achieved its greatest resonance in
the 1950s – when Senator Joseph McCarthy’s reign of terror
was still fresh in the public mind – Miller’s work has elements
that have continued to provoke public and intellectual
responses across the globe. A number of similarities can be
found in terms of mob psyche, power politics and treatment of
the accused in the case of the Salem witch-hunts, McCarthy’s
Muhammad Safeer Awan
2 Pakistan Journal of American Studies, Vol. 25, Nos. 1 & 2. Spring & Fall 2007
Communist-hunts, and today’s terrorist-hunts. The present
study aims at analyzing the way power is politically
manipulated in times of crisis. Hysteria, paranoia, and a
carefully constructed fear are common threads in all three
cases. The result is social stigmatization, stereotyping and
persecution of the worst kind. The play has a broad sweep of
moral contexts in which the mob mentality overrides personal
integrity and places blame on scapegoats as it proves easier to
do this than confront deep-rooted societal inadequacies,
created especially by global capitalism.
He is a dangerous criminal..
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HOPE IT HELPS YOU.✌✌</h3>
Hello~
They most likely wanted slaves to be afraid so they did not collect the courage to escape or disobey. With low self esteem they might not try anything.
Good luck!
Ary~
