Those Familiar Spirits

In most Western cultures, black cats are considered a symbol of evil. Black felines are seen as familiars of witches or even as witches themselves through shapeshifting. The association of black cats, witches and the devil led to frenzy that pushed people to kill black cats. Superstitions and the unknown are what led the famous witch hunts in the United States in the 1690s. The Crucible by Arthur Miller uses an allegory of 1692 Salem to denounce the abuses and other kind of witch hunt that happened in 1953 with McCarthyism.

In the 1950s, the United States is in a force contest with another great power, the Soviet Union, during the Cold War, characterized by a period of political tension between the two superpowers with drastically opposite doctrines. Communism is expanding its influence and the United States fear what they call the “Red Scare”. This increasing fright leads to a “witch hunt” conducted by the Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The idea of community is in the heart of Arthur Miller’s play. In Salem, the devil is in the outside world waiting to penetrate the community and tear it apart by making people go against each other. In the 1950s, Communism is also seen as an expanding evil force, Miller says: “It is not hard to see how easily many could have been led to believe that the time of confusion had been brought upon them by deep and darkling forces”. Like in Salem, the fear of the loss of power transformed into paranoia of communist spies everywhere. Likewise, Miller shows that there is a similar pattern in both events. They illustrate how easy it is for people to get caught up in a mass hysteria that destroys entire communities. Moreover, the 1950’s society is highly based on strict gender roles with high expectations from the part of the individual. With the apparition of the term nuclear family, genders are given specific functions in the household. This pressure has similarities with the Puritan pressure exercise in Salem. Society ostracises those who are not a part of the models. This can be found in the play with the character of Tituba, the slave from Barbados, or Sarah Good, who is pregnant but has no husband. Thus, McCarthy’s witch hunt play on fear and differences to “purge” the society, ultimately withdrawing the impression of community. This purgation is letting marginal identities as the scapegoats, the “sacrifices” for the peace of the community. The pressure on individuals is reflected in the play with Abigail Williams that accuses people of witchcraft to hide the fact that she broke the Puritan rules. Those repressive rules force the citizens to denounce others to hide their wrongdoing.

The rupture in the community is also carried on by personal motivations, like economic concerns that transcend morals. Indeed, the denunciation as a purgation of society permits the use of the crisis for egoistic reasons. In Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw, the professor Denton is accused of communist sympathies without any proof. He is denounced by the university so that they can keep the money given by the state. He is a scapegoat and the personal interest overcome everything. This reality of the witch hunt echoes 1692, when the accusatory could keep the victim’s possessions. Actually, the conflict between Giles Corey and Thomas Putman reflects this situation. Corey accuses Putnam during the trial of false testimonies against his neighbours to be able to steal their lands: “If Jacobs hangs for a witch he forfeit up his property –that’s law! And there is none but Putnam with the coin to buy so great a piece. This man is killing his neighbours for their land!” This egoistic point of view can also be found in the character of John Proctor. He knows that Abigail Williams and the other girls are lying in their accusations but he refuses to get involved until his wife is indicted. He is trying to keep the secret of his affair. When the hysteria touches too many lives, Proctor tries to oppose to the court. But, his late awareness does not permit to save Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey. His inaction with his knowledge of the situation resulted in the death of innocents. This draws a parallel with McCarthyism and the execution of the Rosenberg’s couple, after they claimed their innocence. The affair was widely shared in the Medias and rushes late intervention of the Senate to stop the actions of Joseph McCarthy in 1954, after they knew the situation was going too far. Finally, times of struggle reflect how challenging it is for a community to keep reason and order. It shows the power that fear can have on people’s mind. In this binary world, fear and individualism bring division in the society, permitting all kind of abuses.

One of the main abuses that McCarthyism brings into the American society depicted in The Crucible is the absence of real justice. With the reinstalment of the HUAAC in 1945, making allegations, especially of political subversion or even treason against people without proper evidence or foundation become a part of the justice spectrum of the United States, more particularly in the 1950s. The HUAAC is known for its assumption of guilt instead of innocence promised by the justice system. In 1956, Miller is found guilty of contempt of Congress and is blacklisted. Artists and intellectuals at that time are often suspected of affiliation with communism and boycotted for this reason. The actor and future president Ronald Reagan is collaborating with the Committee in order to reveal the influence of Communism on Hollywood and denounced a number of his colleagues. Like in Salem, the only way to make a clean breath is to name names, Tema Nason says: “Confess, lie, and you’ll live”. It is reflected in the play, the only choice left to the convicted is to refuse to name names or to lie about the confession. This is the dilemma that John Proctor encounters, he does not want to confess and lie about it because he is innocent but he does not want either to be punished for not saying anything.

In both cases he will be found guilty, by the court or by his morals. It is one of the play’s themes: men’s refusal to lie in opposition to an authority figure that demands immoral acts in order to maintain a hypocritical appearance of control. Thus, there is no real justice since flimsy testimonies, innuendoes are accepted as incontrovertible shreds of evidence. It can be seen in the play when the judge Danforth says “Do you know, Mr Proctor, that the entire contention of the state in these trials is that the voice of Heaven is speaking through the children?” Moreover, Amir Aziz in his article “Using the past to intervene in the present: spectacular framing in Miller’s The Crucible” describes the attitude of the justice system as “arrogance of the prosecutors in both Salem and McCarthy periods”, refusing to see that fear is controlling their form of power. Miller describes it as “the same misplaced pride that had for so long prevented the original Salem court from admitting the truth before its eyes were still alive here. And that was for the good of the play too, it was in the mood”. The judiciary system is manipulated by the special and outstanding powers given to the HUAAC, Aziz depicts it as a “permanent standing committee with unique powers to subpoena and investigate”. The speciality of this committee is the source of abuses, it is the first committee with that much power, and its specificity is not regulated by the government, proving their desperate attitude towards the situation.

The desperate aspect of the government manifests itself by the manipulation of the crowd. In the 1950s, the world is divided between Communism against Capitalism. Indeed, Communism is expanding itself, despite the Containment Policy, with China and the Korean War, letting the place to questioning the success of the American model. If communism is expanding to other countries, and people interest is growing, it is maybe that the American model is failing. Moreover, this situation is also in conflict with the “Manifest Destiny” which is an idea in American culture and history that the settlers had to expand their way of living in North America. This idea is based on three themes, the virtues of American people and establishments, the mission of the United States to remake the world in their image and finally the fact that this destiny is a mission given by God

This loss of control is used by the government to tease anxiety among the society in order get rid of people who do not share the same mainstream values, they are depicted as a national threat. Thereby, McCarthy implements politics of controls in an attempt to “purge” the society with enhanced surveillance, blacklisting and repressions against trade union activists and left-wing political attachments. Furthermore, he creates apprehension with his discourse in 1950 with his list of 205 communist spies working for the government. The presence of this list makes the totalitarian threat real on the eyes of the community and rationalise every actions taken by the government and the HUAAC to maintain the National security. The government organises an open fight against Communism to hide the fact that they could not stop the spreading of it. This battle takes the form of an open blacklisting against artists, for Aziz, it “was a mass media campaign that required famous public figures first to confess their past or current affiliation with communism” to show that communism was really infiltrated in the country. Thus, by placing The Crucible in 1692, Miller protects himself from any censorship. He uses and reworks history in order to denounce the situation, he says: “we were living in an art form, a metaphor that had no long history but had suddenly, incredibly enough, gripped the country”. With his play, Arthur Miller exposes the political spectacle that is McCarthyism and reveal the frame of the manipulation set up by the government, to frighten the society but also, in a paradoxical way, to bring it together around the same subject.

Arthur Miller dramatizes history to comment on the present, in order to show that history is repeating itself. His play depicts the United States in the 1950s as a broken community ruled by fear. He gives a critic of the justice system that is taking denunciation as an undeniable proof and where the presumption of innocence has no place. Miller denounces the government that manipulated the mass paranoia in order to have more control over the community and hide the fact that they are losing influence in other parts of the world.

Composed by,

Cécile Fardoux, Undergraduate of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen