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Propaganda In The Crucible

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Propaganda In The Crucible
In the play “The Crucible”, by Arthur Miller, it describes the happenings of the Salem Witchcraft Trials and it symbolizes how The Red Scare, After World War Two, is so similar as people accused their neighbors and friends for their own personal purpose Arthur Miller wrote “The Crucible” to show how Senator McCarthy and the HUAC's actions of accusing communism is similar to Governor Danforth and the Salem Witchcraft Trials are both being fueled by propaganda and misinformation. In his play he changes the hangings of three important names in the town Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey, and John Proctor to all hang in at one date, and he also changes John Proctor’s life details. He used Salem as his example to show how in the Red Scare they were doing …show more content…
He did this by showing Salem full of friends and family accusing each other over land or anything else bad that happened. This image of Salem allowed him to establish a link to his opinions of The Red Scare. This is proven in by Arthur Miller in “Arthur Miller, Why I Wrote The Crucible” as he expressed “so many practices of the Salem trials were similar to those employed by the congressional committees.”(Miller) In order to show this idea of misconduct and misinformation in accusations of people he makes changes in the date of hanging of John Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, and Martha Corey to increase the importance of showing how the accusations targeted some people with large respect to their names. This is proven in an article describing the differences between the real Salem Witchcraft Trials and Miller’s Crucible, “Arthur Miller's The Crucible:Fact & Fiction.” as they were hung on different dates unlike the play “Rebecca Nurse was hanged on July 19, John Proctor on August 19, and Martha Corey on September 22.”(Burns) This matters because it shows how no matter what the information was in accusations during the trials just like in the 1950s. The mention of Witchcraft was used as a scapegoat by Abigail and Ann puttnam as they spinned witchcraft on to John Proctor and Rebecca Nurse for their problems. This matters because similar to the Red Scare whenever someone was accused in order to get out of trouble or if someone wanted to accomplish their personal agenda they would accuse anyone and it would get accepted without sometimes any valid

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