The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 3 - Allegories Galore! - How To Incite Hysteria And Create a Bogeyman!

The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 3 - Allegories Galore! - How To Incite Hysteria And Create a Bogeyman!

Crucible- episode 3

I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. This is the third week in our discussion of Arthur Miller’s play, the Crucible. In Week one we went back in time to the 1690s and looked at the historical context and the story that gave inspiration to this modern American play. Week 2, we set all the history aside and looked at this play from a literary perspective, looking at Proctor as a tragic hero, at the internal and external conflicts, and I learned what a French scene was. This week, we are going to look at this play as a fairly straightforward allegory- an allegory of the part of the Cold War that today we call the Red Scare, the Lavender Scare and McCarthyism.

Garry, I know you’ve been looking forward to this segment, because we are going to get into some of the dirty details of this strange occurrence in American history that most who of us especially those of us living outside of the United States may not even be very familiar with.

True and if you think the intrigue behind the Salem Witch Trials is complicated, the intrigue: personal, financial, and political that went into the Red Scare is exponentially worse- America obviously is much larger, the organizations and people involved are more numerous, and the complicating circumstances are more grave- like nuclear war. Remember, Arthur Miller was born in 1915, that’s during WW1, he lived through the very hard economic times of the depression as a child- that is not something you forget.

So true, my grandmother died just a few years ago and was his contemporary. When she died, my aunts threw away literally 100s of thousands of egg cartons and butter tubs that she had stored since the 1920s, not because she was financially destitute, she was decidedly middle-class, but because those depression era habits of conservation never left her after even 80 years.

Absolutely, that entire generation’s world view is colored and scarred by the extreme hardships of the depression as well as those brought on by WW2- These two events are going to shape Miller’s world view- but there is one more very important personal characteristic we can’t overlook. Miller is Jewish- and although the United States is a much safer place to be for Jewish families than Europe, America is not free of anti-semitism, and Miller grows up understanding and feeling the oppression of racism.

Miller’s breakout play, All my Sons, if you remember from episode 1 came out in 1947, right after the end of world war 2, and if interpreted a certain way, could be viewed as being critical of capitalism and the pursuit of wealth as a life goal- these were moral perspectives acquired from his life experiences. Miller was critical of some of the changes coming out of this era and the changing of values he was a part of. He was young, educated and exploring in his own mind ideas about how the social contract between humans living together is best understood. Miller was doing all of the natural sort of soul searching young adults should do and arrived at the same conclusions many of his and frankly are generation arrive at,

Garry, what’s that famous Winston Churchill Quote

Well the quote I think you’re thinking of is “If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.”

That’s it!! He’s in is brainless phase, I guess.

HA! Christy, just so we don’t get a correction tweet on Twitter- this quote is actually incorrectly attributed to Churchill. Nobody knows who really said that. I’ve heard it attributed to so many people- one the historian, François Guizot, others think it started with Victor Hugo, some even attribute it to King Oscar II of Sweden.

Good grief, how ironic that a quote about sharing values is actually shared by so many different people.

Ha! Well, your point is- lots of people start out with lots of idealism- especially young people- especially good young people- and socialism for many, and I don’t want to take a political side here, is considered idealistic-- at least that’s the point the quote is making.

Except, at this same time, America is getting neck deep into another war, at least that’s what we’ve come to call this stand -off between the United States and the Soviet Union. The cold war took on some of the vestiges of WW2- this good versus evil narrative from WW2 was in the minds of everyone. Stalin, who one year before had been our alley, was feared as being something of the next Hitler- the next personification of evil and death- and of course, we know from history - the atrocities he committed if you just look at the numbers were far greater th...