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Literary Devices
Definition of Allegory
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The Tortoise and The Hare" is... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and... read full definition
Allegory
Explanation and Analysis—McCarthyism:
The Crucible functions as an allegorical representation of McCarthyism, an era in which the senator Joseph McCarthy stoked national paranoia about the covert influence of communists on the United States. In the early 1950s, there was considerable fear in the United States surrounding the Cold War, and many citizens directed this fear toward the idea that communists might be hiding in plain sight and working to undermine American values.
Senator McCarthy helped position communism as something to be feared—something that went against the upstanding morals that most people held dear in the United States. He also helped implement practices that made it easy to accuse a staggering number of people of nefarious behavior, often without having good reason to suspect them of working against national interests. The effects of this paranoia reverberated throughout American culture, causing many people to lose their jobs because of alleged ties with the Communist Party—even homosexuality was enough to attract suspicion, as McCarthyism was used to target anyone who existed outside the country's heteronormative paradigms.
It's clear, then, that McCarthyism reached a point of hysteria, as it slowly became an excuse for narrow-minded government officials to persecute anyone who didn't adhere to what they viewed as traditional and respectable American values. In other words, the search for communists in the United States became a witch hunt. As the 1950s wore on, public opinion began to shift away from Senator McCarthy. This is made evident by the fact that The Crucible was staged in 1953, just one year before a set of televised hearings in which Senator McCarthy tried to prove accusations he had made against the United States Army—hearings that largely made McCarthy look like a paranoid bully.
The Crucible comments on this tumultuous period in history by presenting a fictionalized view of the Salem witch trials that took place some 200 years earlier. In these trials, young women were persecuted based on absurd and baseless accusations of witchcraft. Arthur Miller draws on this history of hysteria and paranoia to comment on his current cultural landscape, suggesting that the relentless and unreasonable search for communists in the United States falls prey to the same frightened, irrational, and ultimately oppressive mindset that fueled the Salem witch trials.
Related Themes:
