Miller on The Cold War and The Crucible (Part II)

1. Miller on The Cold War and The Crucible (Part II)

2. Learning Goals: • Get a sense of the key issues and themes in the text as identified by the author himself • Get a clearer sense of the link between McCarthyism and the Salem Witch Trials • (You may want to take notes at the end of the presentation when I’m summarizing these…the Powerpoint will be posted on MyClass as well)

3. Miller on the relationship between McCarthyism and The Crucible: • “…some astonishing correspondences with that calamity in the America of the late forties and early fifties” (3) • “A lot of us were confronted by the same sensation of having stepped into another age” (39)

4. “Ideological war” • “a hunt not just for subversive people but for ideas and even a suspect language” (4) • “the enemy is first of all an idea whose proponents are not in uniform but are disguised as ordinary citizens” (4)  paranoia • “I have never been able to believe in the reality of these people being…traitors” (8-9) • “It is always with us, this anxiety, sometimes directed towards foreigners, Jews, Catholics, fluoridated water, aliens in space, masturbation, homosexuality, or the Internal Revenue Department” (9)  hysteria

5. “Now… the Russians had become the enemy of mankind, a menace to all that was good” (10)

6. “the idea of the whole country spying on itself” (13)  Nazi Germany, 1984, etc.Why is this so common? • “It seems that handling all that disloyalty had infected him too” (13)  consider the role of those who change their mind, but it’s too late for them to be taken seriously • “…most people were a lot less naïve than really to believe in America’s social invulnerability” (17) Consider Salem as a sort of stronghold of Puritanism in the dangerous wilderness of America

7. The “Rituals of Defence:” • “…what was in their brains was the question” (27) impossible to prove except by faith in accusers • “Thus, the informer became the very axle of the plot’s existence and the investigation’s necessity” (43) • “Only this ritual of humiliation…could finally win the accused re-admission into the community” (43) • “In the end, the charge itself, suspicion itself, all but became the evidence of disloyalty” (35)

8. But there weren’t witches and there were communists, does that make a difference? • There were witches • Were Communists really a threat to the USA? • “Of course there were witches, if not to most of us then certainly to everyone in Salem; and of course there were communists, but what was the content of their menace?” (33)  i.e. were they really a serious threat to anyone, let alone society as a whole? • What makes something “real” or “true”?

9. “I have often wished I’d had the temperament to do an absurd comedy, which is what the situation so often deserved.” (39) What would it have been like? Would it have been more effective then? Now?

10. “Seen up close, however, it was all even more complicated; some confessors experienced genuine relief from the secret burden carried by the outsider…there was even a certain gratitude for having been forced to emerge from the guilt-ridden shadows into the American light, where accepted opinion and openness prevailed, into the blessed country of the majority which never knows guilt” (44)

11. Is this true? Is “everyone does it” a socially acceptable excuse for immoral actions? Is morality just defined by the masses?

12. Key Points: • Ideological Warfare • A sense of unreality/being out of sync with time for those in the midst of the crises • One group of people representing evil for a whole society • A country spying on itself • A vulnerable society • Accusation • The “Secret Burden of the Outsider” • Confession as Relief/Salvation

13. For Monday: • Read Introduction and Note on Historical Accuracy • This Powerpoint will be posted • “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Puritanism” (No prep. necessary on your part, just bring your excitement!)