Aurthur Millers The Crucible and McCarthyism Essay

The message in which Miller writes teaches teenagers about what life was like in the centuries before their time, and what some of the themes in those times were; which are also parallel to what happened during Miller’s lifetime, in the era of McCarthyism, as it does in today’s social and political problems. All three of these eras have intolerance, hysteria, reputation, and empowerment woven throughout them. This is one of the reasons they are connected to each other. Teenagers learn many different things from The Crucible’s message, including the Puritans’ intolerance to anybody who did not follow their religion to a tee, or anybody who they considered â€Å"different† from themselves. It is because of this intolerance that the Puritans†¦show more content†¦Salem empowered a group of children by listening to them accuse many members of their community, and those accusations sentencing many innocent people to their deaths. Today’ s teenagers learn about the history during the Salem witch trials, and what it means to judge a person unfairly without knowing, or accepting all of the facts given. The men and women who were charged with witchcraft in seventeenth century Salem deserved the right to live, but many of them were executed because criminals t the time did not have the right to live, as there was not equality under the law for them. Also, the more money a family had, and the better their reputations were, the less likely the charge of witchcraft. This was because they were considered â€Å"more equal† than the poorer citizens and their families, as it was with slavery in the nineteenth century. Slaves were considered personal property, and therefore were inferior to their masters and everybody else. In Miller’s lifetime, McCarthyism was happening. The Red Scare in the 1950s made everyone in the United States afraid of what communists in the United States might do to them. This intolera nce between communists and non-communists caused distrust, suspicions, and mass hysteria during the Cold War in the United States, as it did in seventeenth century Salem. A person’s reputation during McCarthyism, however, could hurt them more then