Arthur Miller was an American playwright born in New York City on October 17, 1915. Miller’s talent, combined with the period of history he witnessed, gave him a unique perspective on the world. He was heavily influenced by the Great Depression because his father, a small-scale manufacturer, suffered from the financial upset. This exposed Miller to the precarious conditions of financial reality in the country and the potential impact the economy could have on families. After working for many years to collect a college fund, Miller attended the University of Michigan and graduated in 1928. His first major success was a drama called All My Sons, which won him a Drama Critics' Circle Award and a Tony Award, establishing him as a prominent writer (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). Miller also had great success with his 1949 play Death of a Salesman, where he explored the morality of businessmen in the United States and the extent people will go to for economic prosperity. Death of a Salesman remains his most notable work, earning him a Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and a Tony Award. The play was adapted into a film and had five Broadway revivals over a span of fifty years. Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible is another one of his noted works that earned him an additional Tony Award, where he examines the Salem Witch Trials in colonial Massachusetts. This play echoed ideas of McCarthyism, an anti-communist smear lead by a U.S. Senator, and why accusations without fact are detrimental to society. Because the government suspected him of communist activities, the House Committee on Un-American Activities called Miller to testify. Throughout his later works, Miller continues to analyze anti-Semitic ideas and Jewish identity, having witnessed the impacts of World War II. Miller died February 10, 2005, in Roxbury, Connecticut at the age of 89, survived by his four children (Goldstein).
In his work, Miller continuously examined socioeconomic themes of America, focusing on the rights of minorities and how the economy affects the public beyond the physical realm. The Crucible described the Salem Witch Trials of the seventeenth century and in this, Miller criticized the political thought of McCarthyism, where politicians were making baseless claims about supposed communist risings in America (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). Miller used The Crucible as a vehicle to analyze how fake news can have detrimental effects if left unbridled by illustrating the deaths of numerous witches in the Trials. This also describes how fear-mongering about witches, like Senator McCarthy did about the communists, had deadly effects on the society of Massachusetts in the late 1690’s (Schechter). Miller also focused on the social issues that arose about morality after the Great Depression and during World War II. His play All My Sons reflects a businessman losing his moral compass in his quest for wealth during the war (Ternate). Here, Miller could allude to how many global populations during the war failed to realize what was happening to the Jewish populations of Eastern Europe and how prevalent self-interest was in the wake of the Great Depression.
The colonial period of Massachusetts was one shrouded in extremity and the strong hope for a reformed society. John Winthrop was the governor of the colony and led this Puritan society to seek a stretch of land where the Puritans could form a “City on a Hill,” or the exemplary Christian society for all others to follow. From a religious standpoint, the Puritans supported the idea of predestination, the idea that God only saves a few chosen followers to go to Heaven. This belief encouraged discipline in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to strive for the purest way of life and to do right by God. Puritanism was the state-established religion, ignoring policies of religious freedom like the other colonies. They also believed that both women and men could be saved, but equality was limited. Women were still inferior to men, being unable to vote, be ministers, or seen as anything besides male property. The banishment of Anne Hutchinson from the colony exemplifies this misogyny. Hutchinson was a woman who held weekly prayer meetings for women and called out clergymen for dubious behavior, which earned her an expulsion from the society. Another citizen who revealed his views against the establishment was Roger Williams, a minister in Salem, who criticized the lack of secularism in the colony. The magistrates found both of them guilty of having heretical views and exiled them to Rhode Island. Politically, Massachusetts’ binding of church and state gave it a unique colonial system with a representative government formed of a governor, council, and assembly, all of whom were church members. A joint-stock corporation, a commercial deal wherein wealthy men invested in the government to ensure mutual support, formed the colony governed from Boston (Henretta et al. 61-62). Their first text defining civil rights was the Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641. The document draws heavily on British common law and even ties back to one of the first notable law codes, the Magna Carta. Nathaniel Ward, a Puritan minister and lawyer, drafted the Body of Liberties. Some of the articles defined in the document were influential and intelligent enough to be used in reference for the Bill of Rights over 100 years later. Many of the descriptions from the document are also reflected in the Constitution with basic rights like a writ of habeas corpus, juries in trials, property rights, and elected officials (Morrison).
Late seventeenth-century New England Puritans continued to be extremely conservative, religiously and socially. They believed in God’s supernatural forces acting around them at all times in nature and life. Therefore, many believed that there were people who manipulated these forces and that they were witches ordered by Satan and must be tried as criminals. Supposedly, the witches could “raise the Devil” and people accounted that they experienced “strange seizures” as a result of their neighbors casting spells on them. Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 had the most dramatic cases of the “sorcery”, eventually trying 175 different people for witchcraft and executing 19. The source of this mass hysteria is one that is commonly debated today among historians, but many factors of social hierarchy come into play when analyzing the causes of the Salem Witch Trials. Witches were most often identified by daughters or servants of penniless farmers who could have been showing hatred for classism in their accusations against daughters of priests and wealthy church officials. This reveals that it is likely none of the accused were actually practicing witchcraft but were rather targeted for their status which was unattainable to the lower classes. The alleged witches were also noticed for being disobedient and unruly, which only furthered the belief that women must be controlled by their male counterparts for the commonwealth. Another striking fact that was continuous throughout the Trials was the accusation of women as the witches. Of the nineteen people executed, only one of them was male, showing how women were disproportionately targeted as heretics. Historians see this as another way for Puritans to continue the misogyny and subordination of women in society. These ideas of witchcraft show how the baseless claims of many led to mass delirium and an overarching fear of “bewitching” women (Henretta et al. 63-64).
Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was an influential member of the U.S. Senate during the 1950’s and he was notorious for creating the political campaign dubbed McCarthyism. McCarthyism was the fear-mongering with baseless claims practiced by Senator McCarthy and his fellow Republican senators. The essential situation surrounding McCarthyism was the spurious accusations alleging that over 150 members of the U.S. State Department were meeting secretly to garner information for the Communist Party and push their agenda. At this time in history, the globe was still reeling from the aftermath of World War II and America was still on the rise after the Great Depression. America was in the atmosphere of the early Cold War against the Soviet Union, where McCarthy led the crusade against the communist party, causing one of the most notorious examples of political repression in American history. McCarthyism gained such an intense following and popularity due to its support from credible organizations like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which therefore managed to gain support from some moderate and even liberal citizens. Findings from the HUAC and senators caused many people all across the nation to be blacklisted in the entertainment, economic, and business sectors. McCarthy’s original speech that alleged the existence of communists in the U.S. government created a massive political hysteria across the country leading to sanctions against the common citizen and a prodigious repression of constitutional rights. Fear-mongering created the belief that everyone was a suspect and everyone was capable of communism, which also made citizens wary of his or her diction and the power that those words held. The overall impact of McCarthyism was reminiscent of the Salem Witch Trials, where numerous uncorroborated statements fabricated a narrative against a nonexistent issue; witchcraft in 1692 and communism in 1950 (Schrecker).