Preview

The Crucible And The Red Scare In The 1950's

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
190 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Crucible And The Red Scare In The 1950's
Particularly during between the 1940’s and early 1950’s, communist activity has risen high enough and people were more cautious, that including the national government. People were more wary of others so much, it was granted its own name, the “Red Scare”. Companies became harsher on their applicants, many lost their jobs from just the slightest sort of allegation. Those thought out to be a communist or have some sort of link to the ideology or groups pertaining communism, were put on a special list called the “Hollywood Blacklist”. Those who have failed to testify in the Supreme Court and were deemed guilty, were placed on that particular list. Those placed could not find jobs, they were turned a blind eye from companies and the Hollywood industry alike.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    1. 1:32:22 – 1:32:35 Shot starts with wide shot of Tono lighting a match in a dark room. Mrs. Lautmannova is asleep on the bed right next to him. He begins to shake her awake calling her name. She awakes, startled and asks who it is as she turns and reaches for the light.…

    • 3365 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Salem Witch Trials and the 1950's Red Scare were both the product of fear, hysteria, suspicion, and false accusations. These black events in American history had countless similarities that led to the persecution of many innocent individuals. In many ways, these events were initiated because of human nature and fear of the unknown. It is a natural instinct of all animals to proceed with caution when presented with something that is different. This reaction is a defense mechanism to protect ones self from potential harm and caused the mass hysteria to spread.…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    You ask me what parallels there are between the play The Crucible and the event The McCarthy Era. There were many parallels throughout the whole play. In this play everyone was blamed for no reason at all and all everyone one did was make excuses to try and not get their own selves in trouble. They were always wondering why everyone was getting tricked into believing that witches existed and it was because they were all just trying to get themselves out of trouble. Arthur Miller shows the audience that people have not moved on that much from when people were believing in the Salem witch trials. All through this play, Miller used the trails in The Crucible and the McCarthy Era because he realized that the events were the same. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible to help everyone today, who wasn’t alive back then, notice that they were not going crazy they were just trying to keep themselves alive and just they were believing everything they heard.…

    • 899 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    McCarthyism had a profound effect upon the American society, much as the witch trials did upon the people of Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600's recounted in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. The manner of the interrogations is extremely similar in both situations. In McCarthy's interrogations, everyone is treated roughly in the same manner and accused wrongfully. Similarly in The Crucible, the accused are questioned repeatedly until they are broken. In Langston Hughes' interrogation, some of the questions he is asked are as follows: “Have you ever been a Communist? … Have you ever attended a Communist party meeting? … Have you ever believed in Communism?” (k-state.edu). The interrogator asks the same questions over and over by just rephrasing a few words all the while frantically searching for a slight variation in the answers he receives. Similarly in The Crucible, John Proctor…

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Decades ago, in the later part of the 1940’s and 1950’s, Americans were very fearful about the ideas of communism spreading to the United States. Considering this, they launched a system allowing them to investigate alleged disloyalty; they called this the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Their initial plan was to step up its efforts to expose and eliminate communist in the American society. In addition to focusing on labor unions, government officials, and militaries’, the HUAC turned its attention to Hollywood in 1947. More than 40 workers in the film industry received subpoenas ordered for them to help uncover communist, but 10 of those people refused to testify in court, giving them the famous nickname of: The Hollywood Ten.…

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    When McCarthy won as Senate in 1946, World War II was over and the Cold War was beginning. Communist governments had gained hold in Eastern Europe and China, and Americans were increasingly concerned about it and about rumors of U.S. government officials who were secret communists (Hoyt,1). Joseph McCarthy used this fear it to his advantage making unsupported incriminations. The American Heritage Dictionary defines McCarthyism as "the political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence." McCarthy made the incriminations public that more than two hundred communists had infiltrated the United States regime. McCarthyism has referred to the unfair tactic of incriminating people of disloyalty without corroborating with any solid evidence. House Un-American Activities Committee was made to investigative committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Originally created in 1938 to inquire into subversive activities in the U.S. (dictionary). HUAC often pressured witnesses to surrender names and other information that could lead to more communists. With this program the came up with a list of names suspected of communism call “black list”. This was publicized in the media, became what amounted to “an official black list." The Republicans did little to stop McCarthy’s attacks because they believed they would win the 1952…

    • 1595 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Does Arthur Miller's “The Crucible” effectively demonstrate the concept of what was going on the Red Scare? That is the question I am going to answer in this essay. I believe Arthur Miller draws these parallels perfectly. The Salem witch trials are the same thing as the Red Scare , just in a different time period. This essay is going to draw the parallels to demonstrate how my above statement is correct.…

    • 600 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Have you ever done something you should not have because you were afraid? Such as, lie to keep yourself from getting in trouble? Did your actions cause you to question yourself? Arthur Miller was a famous playwright during the twentieth-century whose work opened up the eyes of the blind by showing them what they could not see through the arts of American theatre. He has written numerous plays, but out of them all The Crucible, written in 1953, is one of the most popular. Acting on fear causes us to become someone that we are not. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he shows us that the fears of the past are always evolving into something that we fear…

    • 119 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In The Crucible, the author displays the power that fear and suspicion have over people through the divine will of the main characters as it spreads throughout the community. During act three of The Crucible, Mary Warren was taken in front of the court to confess the lies and suspicion that the young girls were spreading throughout the town. While trying to confess, Mary was pressured into irrational fear of being convicted of being a witch, because of this Mary turned against Mr.Proctor, accusing him of witchcraft. Without thinking Mary let her fear control her actions, which resulted in the arrest of John Proctor. People would rather make decisions based on avoiding fear then facing them, finding the easy way out of a bad situation.…

    • 503 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Politics lead to the founding of our country and has continued to have a major influence on all aspects of our lives, including literature. Politics influence not only what an author writes about, it influences what they write about. American literature has always been a major influence in the formation of our country. The writing of the Declaration of Independence to The Crucible have a place in American history. American literature has been used to rally troops for wars, give people hope in times of trouble, and used to show the American pride that runs true throughout America.…

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Have you ever had that moment in your life when you thought to yourself, “Why would he do that, or why would that happen?” Well, that is just what many people thought about McCartyism and the Red scare after that time period had passed. The Red Scare was a point in time when many Americans believed that the uprising of communism would be among them. These waves of the Red Scare happened twice, once after World War One, and the second time, which was more significant, after World War Two. During this time period many people were extremely afraid of communism, so the ideals of McCarthyism rose up. McCartyism was named after Joseph McCarthy, who was the Senator of Wisconsin at the time. Joseph McCarthy’s actions, as well as The House Un-American Activities Committee, and Congress were not justified. It was breaking people’s Constitutional rights, ruining many peoples lives and careers, and because they interrogated hundreds and thousands of people who didn't even believe that communism should exist in our country.…

    • 529 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In these two particular time periods, there were a substantial amount of similarities. The most apparent one was that everyone lived in fear; scared that they would be prosecuted based on accusations, whether they were factual or not, and the personnel in both scenarios made the situations as serious as they were.…

    • 456 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Decade of Fear

    • 338 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Decade of Fear was essentially caused by one man – Joseph McCarthy. When he served on the Senate from 1947-1957, he seemed to make it his personal mission to eradicate all traces of communism from the earth (or at least America). Right away, he went after Hollywood, black-listing anyone involved in the entertainment industry whom he thought might be linked with communists. The following year, he released a list to the public with the names of 154 organizations he believed to have communist affiliations. This initially gained him support from the citizens, as 110 of those organizations did have some form of link to communism.…

    • 338 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Salem Witch Trials in Salem, Massachusetts rocked the town to its core. Hysteria, paranoia, and confusion among the citizens of Salem. Accusing people of casting spells and consorting with the devil. How were the politics and citizenship of this period handled and was it handled correctly? Witchcraft was something very new in the colonies.…

    • 1347 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Crucible and Fear

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person…These seemingly fragile people are the strong people really (Williams: Twenty Years after Glass Menagerie).” Tennessee here captured the very essence of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The Crucible is all about the desperation, hysteria, and fear of Salem’s people. The main theme of The Crucible is fear.…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays