The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 3 - Allegories Galore! - How To Incite Hysteria And Create a Bogeyman!
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The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 3 - Allegories Galore! - How To Incite Hysteria And Create a Bogeyman!
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Crucible- episode 3
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I\\u2019m Christy Shriver, and we\\u2019re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.\\xa0\\xa0
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I\\u2019m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.\\xa0 This is the third week in our discussion of Arthur Miller\\u2019s play, the Crucible.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 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.\\xa0 This week, we are going to look at this\\xa0 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.\\xa0\\xa0
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Garry, I know you\\u2019ve 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.\\xa0\\xa0
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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.\\xa0 Remember, Arthur Miller was born in 1915, that\\u2019s during WW1, he lived through the very hard economic times of the depression as a child- that is not something you forget.
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So true, my grandmother died just a few years ago and was his contemporary.\\xa0 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.\\xa0\\xa0
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Absolutely, that entire generation\\u2019s 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\\u2019s world view- but there is one more very important personal characteristic we can\\u2019t overlook.\\xa0 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\\xa0 anti-semitism, and Miller grows up understanding and feeling the oppression of racism.\\xa0
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\\xa0Miller\\u2019s breakout play, All my Sons,\\xa0 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.\\xa0 Miller was critical of some of the changes coming out of this era and the changing of values he was a part of.\\xa0 He was young, educated and exploring in his own mind ideas about how the social contract between humans living together is best understood.\\xa0 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,\\xa0
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Garry, what\\u2019s that famous Winston Churchill Quote\\xa0
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Well the quote I think you\\u2019re thinking of is \\u201cIf 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.\\u201d
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That\\u2019s it!!\\xa0 He\\u2019s in is brainless phase, I guess.\\xa0\\xa0
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HA!\\xa0 Christy, just so we don\\u2019t get a correction tweet on Twitter- this quote is actually incorrectly attributed to Churchill.\\xa0 Nobody knows who really said that.\\xa0 I\\u2019ve heard it attributed to so many people- one the historian, Fran\\xe7ois Guizot, others think it started with Victor Hugo, some even attribute it to King Oscar II of Sweden.\\xa0\\xa0
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Good grief, how ironic that a quote about sharing values is actually shared by so many different people.\\xa0\\xa0
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Ha!\\xa0 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\\u2019t want to take a political side here, is considered idealistic-- at least that\\u2019s the point the quote is making.\\xa0\\xa0
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Except, at this same time, America is getting neck deep into another war, at least that\\u2019s what we\\u2019ve 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.\\xa0 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 than the damage Hitler was able to do before he was stopped- over 22 million were resettled in the Gulag or in remote frozen settlements, millions were starved, millions others were hunted down and slaughtered for political reasons.\\xa0 Of course, no one knows for sure, but documentation identifies this figure as upward of 12 million people.\\xa0 Stalin was aggressive, he had\\xa0 taken over countries in eastern Europe as well as Central Asia.\\xa0 He had stripped Russians of their religion and made institutionalized atheism the state religion and he had a nuclear weapon. \\xa0 He was every bit as ruthless and threatening to America in the 1950s as the devil was to the Puritans in the 1690s.\\xa0 America after WW2 was immediately filled with fear. We were afraid of a war.\\xa0 We were afraid of Stalin.\\xa0 We were afraid of a nuclear weapon- all of these things are associated with communism- the form of government practiced in the Soviet Union.\\xa0
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I remember my dad talking about that.\\xa0 He told me they had nuclear war drills in school where they would hide under their deaths.\\xa0 I can\\u2019t imagine how that would make a child feel, but I\\u2019m sure it wasn\\u2019t reassurirng that the desk would stop the a-bomb.\\xa0\\xa0
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No, I\\u2019d say not.\\xa0 But I want to highlight the word afraid. This is going to translate and impose an ideological fear- America is afraid of communism- to what degree we should have been is not not the point I\\u2019m going to debate and is not relevant to the Crucible.\\xa0 What we do need to understand is that America is afraid. We are afraid of Stalin and the aggression of the Soviet Union- this means we\\u2019re also afraid of communism and we\\u2019re afraid of atheism.\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
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And then la-dee-da- so enters our dear friend through stage left- kkkkk- it\\u2019s a metaphor- the left- Arthur Miller.
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Oh yes, and btw- Miller is also an atheist.\\xa0
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\\xa0So, It\\u2019s not that Miller is pro-Stalin, but he, like many other liberals is investigating the ideas of communism as a philosophy, a liberal alternative perspective.\\xa0
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I think that\\u2019s fair.\\xa0
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Well- the parallel is already obvious.\\xa0 It\\u2019s the power innate in fear and how changes behavior.\\xa0 Just as the Puritans were afraid of the forest which to them\\xa0 represents death, so too are Americans afraid of the Soviet Union and for them it represents death.\\xa0 And just as death came with the name of witch and brought with it this current of religion the new death has a name- his name is Communism and the religious entanglement of Christianity versus Atheism.\\xa0
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Exactly, and although there are plenty who will argue otherwise, I think, Miller wants to reduce these two historical events to an observation \\u2013 for him quite personal we will see-\\xa0 to highlight how people react and are manipulated by their fears- legitimate fears- how our own fears leave us vulnerable to malevolent people doing malevolent things in the name of public safety.\\xa0 What he wants to point out is horrible people will find a way to use a public crisis to grab power, power they are not entitled to, to oppressing people they are politically opposed to.\\xa0\\xa0
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There is one difference between the two events though, and I know this is on a lot of people\\u2019s mind-\\xa0 the forest didn\\u2019t really kill people and witches may or may not have been real in Salem.\\xa0 But weren\\u2019t Russian a\\xa0 real thing during the Cold War?
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Well, of course, and we\\u2019re going to name some here. But don\\u2019t discount the threats in the New World-there were a lot of things to be afraid of in the New World- and the forest was that part you couldn\\u2019t see- also I am not ready to discount the idea that there weren\\u2019t really witches in the New World.\\xa0 I think there is a tremendous amount of documentation to support that Puritan settlers were dabbling in the occult in various ways.\\xa0 So, it\\u2019s not that there weren\\u2019t\\xa0 real threats- there almost always are in a hysteria-In both cases, it is fair to say that people are not being unreasonable to be afraid of the circumstances of their world. \\xa0 \\xa0 What Miller was pointing out through the allegory were the power grabs occurring during the 1950s because malevolent people had seized an opportunity of access to power that generally is unavailable.\\xa0 The people in Salem didn\'t question the legitimacy of the power grab until it was too late and the hysteria caused the deaths of innocent people.\\xa0 The hysteria led to an over-reaction of the threat at hand.
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Well, it would be un-american not to over-react.\\xa0 We are so good at that.\\xa0 If you come to America and claim to be hungry, you\\u2019re going to get a big gulp drink that has over a liter of soda in it, and if you order a large burger at McDonald\\u2019s it will have three meat patties.\\xa0 \\xa0
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HA- true- but, beyond the tendency to excess in all things- but the root of the evil isn\\u2019t even found in the hysteria, the evil i found in the backstory of the agitators of the fears in Salem, what did Putnam want that he was willing to kill for, what did Abigail want that she was willing to kill for.\\xa0 There is no indication at all that Putnam or Abigail were ever afraid of witches.\\xa0 They weren\\u2019t afraid of witches at all.\\xa0 They knew that others were.
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\\xa0\\xa0And in the same way there are motives to the backstory to American story of the 1950s.\\xa0 There are many in leadership, and this will come as no surprise to any student of Machiavelli, that there are malevolent people who will take what is a real fear and USE it to manipulate people\\u2019s behavior in a direction that will serve their selfish interests.\\xa0 We discussed last week, that for a hysteria to break out, you have to have anxiety, you have to have a fear, but you also have to have a manipulative rat to push the story forward\\u2026and America had more than one- some were truly malevolent, others were likely naive.\\xa0 Here\\u2019s a little more backstory, so in 1947, remember Miller\\u2019s breakout year with his first play, President Truman set up something he called a Federal Employee Loyalty Program.\\xa0 The purpose of this program was to investigate the 3 million federal employees to make sure they were not selling secret information to the Soviets.\\xa0 Now, ultimately this program didn\\u2019t actually fire very many people- only 212 for \\u2018questionable loyalty\\u201d although I will say 3000 quit under protest.\\xa0 But this started something that unfortunately has resurfaced in America again, and not just in America but in a lot of places around the world- you could be in trouble, not for anything you did wrong, but for having wrong beliefs.
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Ha!\\xa0 Sounds like Social Media.\\xa0\\xa0
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Well, in 1947, right after WW2, people were afraid enough to surrender their first amendment right of free speech.\\xa0 They did it willingly because if there was anything we knew we didn\\u2019t want, we didn\\u2019t want Stalin or later Khrushchev to get the nuclear bomb and blow us up. We didn\\u2019t want to go to the Gulag or to re-education camp.\\xa0 That much everyone agreed on.\\xa0 It was a risk no one could take.\\xa0 \\xa0 And so, malevolent people found the leverage they needed to manipulate the rules to their advantage.\\xa0 A committee called the \\u201cHouse of Unamerican Activities Committee\\u201d had already been formed during WW2\\xa0 with the plan of rooting out the nazi threat- well 1947 there was no nazi threat, but the committee was still around, this same committee started to flex its muscles not against nazis, but against our new enemy- the Soviets.\\xa0 It had evolved way beyond its original purpose and now was making headlines because it was targeting, among other industries,\\xa0 the film industry for scrutiny- looking for movies that might be spreading communism- thought police simply doing a service for public safety- if people hate evil thoughts, they might act on those evil thoughts and commit atrocities that could result in nuclear war.\\xa0
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And there is the slippery slope.\\xa0 Of course, to me, even the name of that committee sounds un-American.\\xa0 It\\u2019s un-american to call something un-american- we\\u2019re a melting pot dad gum it?
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Exactly- but again, we\\u2019re playing around with the meaning of words- un-american is a word that has no concrete meaning- so it can mean whatever you want it to mean- just like being a witch-\\xa0\\xa0
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\\xa0One of the first lines of the third act of the play that I really love,\\xa0 Martha Corey has been dragged into court and they ask her if she\\u2019s a witch.\\xa0 She says basically, no, I\\u2019m not a witch, I don\\u2019t even know what a witch is- and then with perfect circular reasoning- the judge says- than how do you know you\\u2019re not one.\\xa0\\xa0
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And that is exactly How all these hearings went- these same twisted lines of reasoning.\\xa0 The real Abigail of the story, however, emerges in February of 1950 when Senator Joseph McCarthy makes a stunning speech in West Virginia claiming that there were no less than 200 active communists working in the State Department. \\xa0 Notice how the meaning of words is being manipulated.\\xa0 There is an implication here that if you are a communist than that means you are in sympathy with the Soviets, and if you have sympathy with the Soviets that means you are a spy and are selling secrets designed to destroy the United States.\\xa0 It\\u2019s quite a leap of logic- and not far from what we see in Act 3 of the Crucible.\\xa0 Being a communist was also an invisible crime.\\xa0\\xa0
\\xa0\\xa0McCarthy, like Abigail, was ambitious and seemed all-powerful.\\xa0 No one ever put the spot light on him.\\xa0 He was a very powerful and convincing speaker and he played on people\\u2019s fears.\\xa0 He relished the spotlight.\\xa0 He coveted the fame he got from this. His power, just like we see with Abigail, increased to the point where he seemed untouchable.\\xa0 If he came after you, you were sunk.\\xa0 To quote Frederick Douglass here- To be\\xa0accused was to be convicted, and to be\\xa0convicted\\xa0was to be punished; the one always following the other with immutable certainty. To escape punishment was to escape\\xa0accusation; \\xa0thousands of civil servants were accused- I want to point out here 100s of homosexuals were somewhat arbitrarily targeted\\u2013 this is what has been termed the lavender scare which although happened at the same time with the same players was actually not the same thing.\\xa0 The logic was slightly different, but no less non-sequitor.\\xa0 There had been an incident in the State department where a gentleman was blackmailed by the Soviets to give them secrets in exchange for keeping it secret that he was a homosexual.\\xa0 At this time it was illegal to be a homosexual and work for the government.\\xa0 But the logic becamevthat you all homosexuals could be blackmailed into giving the Soviets secrets which could destroy America, so, in essence, to be homosexual was to be the same thing as a communist spy.\\xa0
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Goodness, there are so many assumptions in that type of logic.\\xa0 From the present moment, it just doesn\\u2019t seem possible that anyone would go for that.
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And just like, Abigail, McCarthy seemed to have no moral compass at all.\\xa0 He bullied people mercilessly, he got over 7000 people fired from their jobs and got some people killed.\\xa0 People in front of the committee were made to name names- the committee wanted names of other Communist operatives.\\xa0 And again this is where Miller ran into trouble.\\xa0 He refused to give names.\\xa0\\xa0
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Before we talk about that, which is interesting, Isn\\u2019t it important though to make the comparison, where it may have been illegal, I don\\u2019t know to not be a Christian in puritan new England, it\\u2019s not a crime nor has it ever been a crime to be a communist in the United States.\\xa0\\xa0
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True, so McCarthy had to make a bigger connection- and he had a little help.\\xa0 Because the truth was, the Russians were trying to infiltrate our government.\\xa0 They did want our secrets.\\xa0 They were aggressively taking\\xa0 over countries we were specifically worried about Southeast Asia, but they had started insurrections among the local people- look at Cuba, look at Nicaragua and other places of unrest in South America.\\xa0 The cold war was not a fictitious event.\\xa0 It was volatile and violent at many points.\\xa0 There was a man named Alger Hiss, in 1948, he was accused of having spied for the Soviet Union\\u2026and truth be told, the historical record has proven that he was indeed guilty.\\xa0 There was another case, a very public case, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg- Julius Rosenberg for sure (the de-classified records have since somewhat exonerated his wife, but they along with a German scientist named Klaus Fuchs were passing along scientific secrets to the Soviets that eventually led them to be able to detonate their first atomic bomb on September 3, 1949.\\xa0 So, was it true that there were spies infiltrating\\xa0 the State department?\\xa0 No doubt, were people calling each other spies just to get rid of them- Salem-style- again that happened. \\xa0 you can imagine the kind of impact the discovery of this actual spy ring had on the American psyche.\\xa0 These three, btw, were tried, found guilty and sentenced to death.\\xa0 The sentence of the Rosenbergs, was carried out in June 1953- btw- they are the only people to be convicted and executed during the Red Scare.\\xa0\\xa0
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The Crucible opened in January of 1953.\\xa0 That explains why it ran into a couple of box office snags.\\xa0\\xa0
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Yes, and Miller had attended a communist conference, the Waldorf Conference in 1949.
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Maybe not his most political savvy activity.
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No, so the the Crucible opened in January of 1953, and response to it was direct and harsh- it tanked.\\xa0 E.G. marshall who played Reverend hale was black-listed.\\xa0 So was Beatrice Straight who played Elizabeth Proctor (although she cleared herself by paying $500).\\xa0 Madelein Sherwood, who played Abigail was listed as a communist.\\xa0 Let me point out that McCarthy, like Abigail, never produced concrete evidence to support his claims and never uncovered any communist plot or spy ring.\\xa0\\xa0
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It\\u2019s like it was a prophesy and they were literally fulfilling the prophesies of the play.\\xa0\\xa0
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For sure, and going back to Salem for a moment, When I watch the play, I am struck by the immaturity\\xa0of the legal system. It was very underdeveloped. That contributed a lot to what happened. Most important of which is accepting child testimony against adults- which we talked about last week. There was almost no hint of due process of law. And where were the defense attorneys?? In modern times the burden of proof of guilt is the responsibility of the court. No one has to prove their innocence.\\xa0 In these cases- both in Salem and in front of the HUAC committee, this process is reversed.\\xa0\\xa0
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\\xa0But fear is clearly not the sole driving force. In Act 3 when Proctor and Mary Warren challenge the truthfulness of the girl\\u2019s testimony, the judge is terrified that he\'s issued 79 death warrants.\\xa0 And we see that courtroom hysteria is driven by things like the idea of sunken costs, attribution theory, and belief perseverance\\xa0and catharsis and confirmation bias, and counterfactual thinking, deindividuation, fundamental attribution error and illusory correlations. It\'s a social psychologist\'s field trip of info I look forward to unpacking all that next week when we look at Act 4 and discuss Act 4 with this social psychology angle in mind.\\xa0
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I look forward to that because that sounds like you\\u2019re reading a vocabulary list- but even here In Act 3 as we get into the details of how Miller wrote this trial scene it\\u2019s interesting to have in mind\\xa0 just how much of a good social psychologist Miller was- he highlights so much nonsense and portrays what McCarthy was doing as utter foolishness. I do want to say before we do jump into act 3, that we\\u2019re going to skip Act 2, scene 2 where Proctor and Abigail meet in the woods.\\xa0 It\\u2019s not often performed nor is it in my school textbook, but the one thing it does add to the text that I want to make a point of noting is that in this scene Proctor notes that his wife has been in jail for 36 days.\\xa0 In this scene, Proctor tells Abigail what he\\u2019s going to do.\\xa0 Abigail says she\\u2019s glad Elizabeth is going to die and she doesn\\u2019t believe he will expose their affair.\\xa0\\xa0
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So- let\\u2019s get to court-Act 3 which takes place in the Salem Meeting House- again this is our third big set change. And here we are going to see under a magnifying glass what a mass hysteria looks like.\\xa0 I really find this scene painful to watch.\\xa0 In fact, the other day at the gym I was listening to this play on my headphones while I was working out, in preparation for this podcast, and I almost turned it off.\\xa0 It makes me so angry, I can barely stand to hear it.\\xa0\\xa0
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Of course it starts with martha corey, Giles wife been tried off stage where all we do is here what\\u2019s going on. It kind of gives it this creepy feeling.
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I was\\xa0 struck by the idea of the value of creating a boogey\\xa0man\\xa0that can\'t be clearly defined. In fact, it\\u2019s obvious the accusers do not the boogey man defined. If you\'re the accuser you can morph the boogey man anytime you need and it has the effect of keeping your enemies on the defensive. And what Abigail did was exactly what all abusers do, constantly\\xa0 rearranging and defining reality for other people. First, it\\u2019s the specters visiting her, then she stabs herself, eventually there is an invisible bird flying around the room.\\xa0 It has a deadly effect. And there is also Putnam\'s skullduggery that goes on quietly in the background while everyone else is distracted with\\xa0chaos- his powers of suggestion and accusation almost go unnoticed.
There is so much irony here.\\xa0 We, as the audience, are remined that Thomas Putnam is the man behind all of this. It is his daughter that is crying witch and there are financial gains to be made.\\xa0 We are also introduced to the idea right from the first discussion that this will be a show and tell of logical fallacies right out of an AP language textbook.
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Christy, you\\u2019ve mentioned that a lot.\\xa0 Just as a refresher, what is a logical fallacy.
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It\\u2019s when the logic of any given argument doesn\\u2019t make sense.\\xa0 Arguments are made up of what we call premises and conclusions- and this is a short and dirty explanation- but the idea is the premises must be true- and then then when I add up premise one to premise two then they must equal the conclusion.\\xa0 When someone says something that sounds like it makes sense, but really if you think about it, it doesn\\u2019t- you\\u2019ve been fooled by a logical fallacy.\\xa0 There are dozens and dozens of these little tricks and people study for years to figure them out.\\xa0 But there are big obvious ones are the ones Miller uses for example in this case- Martha says- I don\\u2019t know what a witch is, and then hawtorn says- then how do you not know you are not one.\\xa0 Well, she is silenced, because she\\u2019s put on the defensive to think- how do I know?\\xa0 Well, the logic is faulty. He didn\\u2019t offer proof that she was a witch- he just accused her in a slightly different way- like making a circle. \\xa0 And this is the kind of garbage we see in every single one of these accusations.\\xa0
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Later on Proctor is trying to explain that all three of the wives accused have near perfect reputations- Parris says- Cain was an upright man until he murdered Able- - that\\u2019s from the Bible- and yes that is true- everyone is an upright person until they murder- but comparing Cain in the Bible to Elizabeth proctor is a false analogy- those two things aren\\u2019t the same and should not be compared.\\xa0 Cain admitted to killing Able- Elizabeth didn\\u2019t kill anyone nor is anyone even dead.\\xa0 I\\u2019ll show you a third one, but I won\\u2019t go through all of them- there are just to many, but you\\u2019ll get the idea, Later on when Danforth is bearing down on Mary Warren\\xa0 over why she can\\u2019t faint on command, he says, you can either faint on command because it was a pretense or there are no spirits attacking you and that\\u2019s why you can\\u2019t faint.\\xa0 This is called an either/or fallacy- meaning, I\\u2019m going to reduce all the options in the world to only two options- if one is not true than the other must be true- and of course, everyone watching the play can easily see- there\\u2019s a third option- she was able to faint before because she was hysterical and now she\\u2019s not.\\xa0 So, on and on we go with one continuous display of one logical fallacy after another, until we get to the climax of the entire play- Abigail is getting ready to be busted for adultery- the jig is about to be up- and we see the ultimate red herring- a red herring is when you change the subject and get the attention off you and on to something totally unrelated.\\xa0 She sees a spirit bird- Mary Warren has sent her spriit to murder her right then and there.\\xa0 Mary Warren turns on Proctor, accuses him of being the \\u201cDevil\\u2019s Man\\u201d and our antagonist seems to have won.\\xa0 The climax, that moment where Proctor makes a decision from which he cannot return, has come and gone- he has confessed, and it has gotten him nothing but thrown into prison.\\xa0 Proctor will go to jail.\\xa0 Hale has recognized this is a fraud.\\xa0 Abigail seems to be ruling the day, and the audience is absolutely outraged.\\xa0 They can\\u2019t understand how this happened. And yet, she walks away the victor!\\xa0 And so smug about it- she won\\u2019t even answer questions there at the end.\\xa0 How dare they question her.\\xa0\\xa0
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Garry, that\\u2019s my take on it.\\xa0 What\\u2019s yours?
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\\xa0let\\u2019s make our final comparisons to what Joseph McCarthy did in the 1950s- do the parallels?
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Well, of course they work- and from the vantage point of history when we are not blinded by fear or hysteria- it\\u2019s obvious who is evil and who is stupid and who is a hero. .
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In October 1947, when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) convened a hearing in Washington, D.C.,\\xa0 41 screenwriters, directors and producers were subpoenaed. Most responded positively to the committee\\u2019s central question: \\u201cAre you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?\\u201d And those who confessed to membership were offered the opportunity to name \\u201cfellow travelers,\\u201d thereby regaining their good standing with the committee and, by extension, the American film industry. Ten studio executives were called as witnesses and were told to give names.\\xa0 They\\xa0 refused- today they are called the Hollywood Ten. They were fined and sentenced to up to a year in federal prison.\\xa0 That was just the beginning by the time Arthur Miller was called in 1956 before the committee- there had been 9 years of hysterical persecution.\\xa0 Arthur had a close friend, Elia Kazan who did not have the courage to stand up to the committee. He named many names when he appeared at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), prior to Miller\\u2019s appearance.\\xa0 Their friendship was forever severed by this perceived betrayal.\\xa0 It wasn\\u2019t long after kazan\\u2019s appearance before the committee that Miller was brought in.\\xa0 After his appearance, He applied for a passport to go to Belgium for the opening of the Crucible.\\xa0 He was denied his American passport, basically meaning his citizenship was taken away.\\xa0 This was a way for the government to somehow officially declare Miller un-American.\\xa0 Today, NO one sees the world quite like that and we look back horrified- but then again, none of us are wound up in a hysteria over communism at the moment- it\\u2019s not a threat at all.\\xa0\\xa0
Back to that pesky arrogance of the presence- Next week we\\u2019ll finish Act 4.\\xa0 We\\u2019ll\\xa0 start by talking about Marilyn Monroe- which although has nothing to do with the Crucible, is interesting and she did marry Arthur Miller.\\xa0
I know you\\u2019re excited about that tangent,\\xa0 Christy, and we\\u2019ll finish with Miller\\u2019s final thoughts on this play.\\xa0 This week we focused on the direct allegorical link to the American politics of the 50s but I want end with more of\\xa0 Miller\\u2019s words.\\xa0 This is an exerpt from the New yorker written in 1996.\\xa0 Miller is commenting on when he sees The Crucible being performed, Miller said in his famous editorial this- It is only a slight exaggeration to say that, especially in Latin America, \\u201cThe Crucible\\u201d starts getting produced wherever a political coup appears imminent, or a dictatorial regime has just been overthrown. From Argentina to Chile to Greece, Czechoslovakia, China, and a dozen other places, the play seems to present the same primeval structure of human sacrifice to the furies of fanaticism and paranoia that goes on repeating itself forever as though imbedded in the brain of social man.\\u201d
I like that line- furies imbedded in the brain of social man- I guess that\\u2019s really true.\\xa0\\xa0
And where we\\u2019ll pick up next week as we end this amazingly popular American play.\\xa0 Thank you for listening this week.\\xa0 Don\\u2019t forget to check out our social media.\\xa0 Thank you for those of you who take the time to comment, review our work, email us or connect on Twitter.\\xa0 We love hearing from all of you.\\xa0 Special thanks to Ruth who gave us an amazing review on Linked in.\\xa0 It\\u2019s when we hear from all of you that we\\u2019re reminded that although there are Abigails in this world, we are so very grateful it\\u2019s also full of kindness.\\xa0\\xa0
So true.\\xa0 Much love to every one of you and peace out!
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