The Crucible: Historical Context

1
Arthur Millers
The Crucible
2
Miller Background

• Oct. 17, 1915 Feb. 10, 2005
• Died of heart failure
• Wrote
• Death of a Salesman (1949)
• All My Sons (1947)
• The Crucible (1953)
• Many others.

3
Arthur Miller (1915-2005)

• Born in New York City to Jewish immigrants
• Millers father was a successful womens clothing
  manufacturer
• The family business failed when he still at
  school.
• Millers mother was forced to sell off her
  possessions to keep the family afloat.

4
1930s

• Worked at a bakery delivering rolls at 400am.
• Worked at a radio station
• Later worked for his father, who attempted to
  rebuild his clothing business.

age 14
age 16
5
Biography

• Depression hits in 1929, which has a great impact
  on Millers eventual career.
• Never very studious in school up to this point,
  he works odd jobs to save up money to go to
  college.
• Enrolled in U. Michigan in 1934 and wrote several
  playshis first play won an award, which is
  pretty amazing, as he had only seen two plays in
  his life.

6
Biography

• After college, he worked in radio in NYC, writing
  scripts for radio plays.
• His first play wasnt very good (had only 4
  performances).
• His second produced play was All My Sons (1947),
  which received the NY Drama Critics Circle Award,
  a production directed by Elia Kazan.
• His third play was Death of a Salesman.

7
McCarthyism and the Red Scare
8
Miller and Communism

• In the 1940s, Miller had become impressed by
  various leftist efforts to improve conditions in
  business, politics, and the arts.
• After WW II he participates actively in liberal
  causes that come under increasing suspicion as
  being supported by Communists.

9
HUAC
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
Formed in 1938

• Became the most prominent and active government
  committee for anti-communism
• Started by investigating the activities of
  German-American Nazis in WWII
• 1938 began investigating communism in the Federal
  Theatre Project
• Allegations that film stars and leading
  producers, directors and writers were Communists
  dated back at least to 1940, when the then
  chairman of (HUAC), Martin Dies, claimed that
  Communists were in positions of influence in
  Hollywood.

10

• In 1945 Elizabeth Bentley, a former member of the
  American Communist Party, walked into the New
  York office of the Federal Bureau of
  Investigation and offered to provide information
  about a Soviet spy ring. Over the next couple of
  weeks Bentley identified more than 80 people she
  claimed were spies.

11
HUAC
Have you now or have you ever been a member of
the Communist Party of the United States?

• 10 of the first entertainment industry witnesses
  refused to cooperate, citing 5th amendment rights

nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to
be a witness against himself
Cited for Contempt
12
Protests marches

• 1947- began investigating Hollywood

• 11 writers and directors become known
  collectively as 'the Hollywood Ten', plus the
  German dramatist Bertolt Brechtwere charged with
  contempt of Congress for refusing to co-operate
  with the Committee's enquiries. Despite arguing
  that the First Amendment of the Constitution gave
  them that right and protection, the Ten were
  given jail sentences of six to 12 months each,
  Brecht having left the country the day after his
  appearance.

13
Society bends
Blacklisting begins

• Nov. 1947
• The Motion Picture Association of America issued
  the Waldorf Statement

We will not knowingly employ a communist
14
(No Transcript)
15
The Cold War Tension Escalates

• 1949
• the Soviet Union tests an atomic bomb (earlier
  than U.S. expectations)
• Mao Zedongs Communist army gains control of
  mainland China (even though we were helping to
  fund the oppostion)

16
The Cold War Tension Escalates

• 1950
• Alger Hiss, a member of the State Department,
  found guilty of espionage (though only convicted
  of perjury)
• Klaus Fuch confessed to espionage while working
  on the Manhattan Project
• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg arrested and executed
  for stealing atomic secrets for the Soviets

17
Miller in the 1950s

• 1950 McCarthy claims the government and the
  arts (especially the motion picture industry) are
  full of Communists and begins to conduct hearings
  asking people, Are you a Communist and seeking
  to get people to name names of other Communists.

18
Targets of investigation

• Government employees
• The entertainment industry
• Educators
• Union activists

• Communist Party of the USA
• Helped organise labour unions
• Opposed fascism early on
• Peak membership in 1942- 50,000 members

19
J Edgar Hoover

• Nearly doubled the number of FBI employees
  between 1946 and 1952
• Insisted on keeping informers a secret
• Many of the accused were never told who accused
  them or of what exactly they were accused

Head of the FBI 1935-1972
20

• Hoover created a division to carry out illegal
  activities in the name of anti-communism

• Burglary, planting evidence, etc.
• The National Lawyers Guild (one of the few groups
  willing to defend accused communists) had their
  offices broken into 14 times from 1947-1951 by
  the FBI

21
Millers career in the 1950s

• Had been interested in some time in writing a
  play about the Salem Witch Trials, but felt he
  couldnt understand the climate of fear and the
  inexplicable darkness that had produced the
  hysteria of Salem in 1692.Suddenly he could
  understand it

22
The Crucible as an Allegory

• Written about US events in the 1600s as an
  allegory to the US events of the 1950s
• Allegory The representation of abstract ideas
  or principles by characters, figures, or events
  in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.
• In other words When you tell one story to help
  represent what is going on with something else

23
Miller and the HUAC

• When McCarthy begins to investigate alleged
  Communists, Miller becomes concerned that free
  speech was being threatened, particularly speech
  that was critical of the govt.
• He writes The Crucible in 1953, believing that
  the HUAC was harassing those with unpopular
  political views and producing a similar kind of
  hysteria that existed in Salem in 1692.
• He said he wrote the play to expose the process
  by which terror . . . was being knowingly
  planned and consciously engineered. . . . Above
  all, above all horrors, I saw accepted the notion
  that conscience was no longer a private matter
  but one of state administration.

24

• Whenever we turn over our consciences to the
  state (whenever we allow our government officials
  to think for us, and just uncritically go along
  with what were told), then were in trouble.

25
The Crucible

• It wasnt well received (to be expected at the
  height of McCarthyism)

It was as though the whole country had been born
anew, without a memory even of certain elemental
decencies which a year or two earlier no one
would have imagined could be altered, let alone
forgotten. Astounded, I watched men pass me by
without a nod whom I had known rather well for
years and again, the astonishment was produced
by my knowledge, which I could not give up, that
the terror of these people was being knowingly
planned and consciously engineered That so
interior and subjective emotion could have been
so manifestly created from without was a marvel
to me. It underlies every word of The Crucible.
26
Contemporary Reviews

• Many saw it as a history lesson rather than a
  commentary on contemporary America
• In writing of Salem, Mr. Miller attempts no
  blatant modern comparisons, beyond stating
  timeless truths about guilt and conscience and
  hysteria and bandwagon instincts (NY World
  Telegram and Sun).
• Some may try to read into it more than we
  suspect is there. If there are deep implications
  in the script for modern playgoers, we failed to
  find them. (NY Daily Mirror).

27
Others saw clear parallels

• Make no mistake about it there is fire in what
  Mr. Miller has to say, and there is a good bit of
  sting in his manner of saying it. . . . As
  Mr. Miller pursues his very clear contemporary
  parallel, there are all sorts of relevant
  thrusts the folk who do the final damage are
  not the lunatic fringe but the gullible pillars
  of society the courts bog down into travesty in
  order to comply with the popular mood slander
  becomes the weapon of opportunists . . .
  freedom is possible at the price of naming ones
  associates in crime . . . Much of thisnot
  allis an accurate reading of our own turbulent
  age (NY Herald Tribune).

28
Miller before the HUAC

• Members of the HUAC seem to have interpreted the
  play as a contemporary political statement and,
  perhaps, an attack upon them personally.
• In 1954, Miller was refused a passport to go to
  Belgium to attend the Belgian premiere of The
  Crucible.
• His passport application was rejected under
  regulations denying passports to persons believed
  to be supporting the Communist movement, whether
  or not they are members of the Communist party.

29
Preemptive Strike

• 1956-
• Miller was called before the House Committee on
  Un-American Activities
• He was widely known to have advocated principles
  of social justice and equality of classes
• He was disillusioned by the reality of communism
  in the Soviet Union

30

• Quizzed about his ties to Communism, Miller
  denied ever being under Communist discipline
  but did admit to studying Marxism at one point a
  number of years earlier and of attending a
  meeting sponsored by the Communist Party in 1947.
• Asked to name names of other writers at that
  meeting, he refused, was found in contempt of
  Congress, was fined 500 and was sentenced to 30
  days in jail. He appealed and the sentence was
  later reversed.
• Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball, Walt Disney among
  others accused. Those who refused to name others
  were put on the blacklist. The blacklist was
  lifted in 1960