When Arthur Miller wrote "The Crucible," it was during a time when communism was a threat to the American way of life. This particular era was sparked by Joseph Raymond McCarthy's idea about communism in the United States' government. This was a period of political spitefulness and mass hysteria.In 1950, McCarthy had said that there were communists in the Department of State. This accusation was never proven, and the public didn't pay attention to McCarthy's words in the early years of this era. During the year of 1953, McCarthy became chairman of the Senate subcommittee on investigations. Throughout the following years he continued to make his ideas about the government known. In 1954 he accused the secretary of the army of concealing foreign espionage activities. McCarthy started investigating all of his accusations, but was brought up on charges of improper means of investigation and the charges were dropped. One will see in the play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, that the United States basically despised Russia during the 1950's because Russia was a communist state. The United States named Russia "The Devil" (according to the play), because of their communistic ways and dictatorship over the people. The necessity of the Devil may become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to whip men into surrender to a particular church or church-state. Besides what Miller's idea of what communism is, he also has an idea that if one is not communist, or against communism, then they are for the United States government, and if a U.S. citizen does not have the same reactions towards capitalistic "doings" as the rest of the country, then that citizen is considered to be communist, according to Miller. In the countries of the Communist ideology, all resistance of any import is linked to the totally malign capitalist, and in America any man who is not reactionary in his views is open to the cha...
