June 18, 2025 • 45 mins
Why does a 72-year-old play about 333-year-old witch trials still feel urgently relevant today? Arthur Miller's The Crucible has become theater's ultimate evergreen story, because it captures something timeless and terrifying about human nature—our willingness to destroy each other when fear takes hold.
When Miller's play premiered on January 10, 1953, audiences immediately understood it wasn't really about Salem. This was Miller's bold response to McCarthyism, a thinly veiled critique of Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunts that were tearing through American society. Miller had taken the Salem witch trials and transformed them into a mirror, forcing 1950s America to confront its own capacity for panic and persecution.
But here's what makes The Crucible truly remarkable: it didn't stop being relevant when McCarthyism ended. In our current era, when we're so quick to label people as enemies and deny their humanity, Miller's allegory feels more essential than ever. The play's central question—what happens when a community turns against itself in search of hidden enemies—remains one of the most important questions we can ask.
Whether you know the play from school, the stage, or the screen, whether you have family who lived through the Red Scare or ancestors who witnessed Salem's trials, The Crucible speaks to something universal about the human condition. It reminds us that in times of crisis, we all face the same choice: Will we stand with the mob, or will we find the courage to stand for justice?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome to the thing about witchhunts.
I'm Josh Hutchinson. I'm Sarah Jack, and today we're
discussing The Crucible. The Crucible is the famous play
by Arthur Miller, the American playwright.
It premiered on January 10th, 1953, and Arthur Miller had
(00:25):
previously won a Pulitzer Prize for his other famous play, Death
of a Salesman, and he went on in1956 to marry Marilyn Monroe.
It is a dramatized and largely fictionalized story of the Salem
witch trials, and it came out ofthe same era that we.
(00:46):
Got. The book The Devil Massachusetts
from Marion Starkey, 1949 that possibly influenced his
inspiration and creativity. Yes, he came across that book
happily at the time when he was ready to write this new play.
(01:08):
And the other thing that it tiesin with is the second Red Scare
in America, known for McCarthyism and the House on
American Activities Committee, or HEWAC.
And he directly wrote The Crucible in response to one of
his friends being called to testify and to name names.
(01:33):
And after that happened to his friend, he drove to Salem and
started his research and got into all this witch trial
history that he used to shape the story.
Even though, as you said, it is dramatized, it's fictionalized,
but it's a very important allegory for injustice and witch
(01:57):
hunting in general. Going after people, labeling
them as other based on some flimsy suspicions, that kind of
thing. Outcasting who you perceive as
traitors. Yes, very much so.
(02:17):
Anyone you see as a threat to your existence, the existence of
your community, your country, we're supposed to not give in to
fear and allow panic to happen. And then these excesses and
injustices happen in these investigations, like the
McCarthy hearings and the HUAC hearings.
(02:41):
So the Crucible example is as important as it ever was.
And I want to point out, I believe he only had to drive
over from Connecticut, am I right?
That's right, he was visiting his friend in Connecticut and
then he just popped over to Salem.
Those two, they really always seem to connect somehow.
(03:03):
Somehow Connecticut witch trials, Salem witch trials.
There's links there, and commonalities of course.
We're going to jump into the McCarthy trials a little bit
more in this conversation, and it is important to have a grasp
of that history so you can see the allegorical meaning.
Like the witch trials, the McCarthy trials are made-up of
(03:26):
individuals and their stories ofaccusations and injustices.
So The Crucible has been seen extensively in live theater.
There's been multiple film and television adaptations.
It's also satirized in several other newer plays about the
Salem witch trials, such as Witches in Salem, and it's
(03:51):
evaluated and John Proctor is the villain and we have episodes
of The Thing about Witch Hunts about both of those 1 is coming
up and the other we've already done, so go check it out.
And I personally got to see a high school production of
witches in Salem. Speaking of high school, many
(04:12):
people know about the Salem Witch Trials through reading The
Crucible in high school English or Literature classes and
performing it in their theater class or drama club.
So it lot of people get exposed to it.
That's probably why the Salem Witch Trials are so well known
(04:32):
in this country and even abroad.The Crucible runs, you know, in
large theaters in London at times.
It's on the stage right now in aGeorgia high school.
Oh wait, it's not on that stage now.
Oh yeah, Fannin County High School in Fannin County,
(04:56):
Georgia, north of Atlanta. I guess some of the adults in
the community felt that the Crucible is a bit demonic, which
having watched it a number of times and read it, I
wholeheartedly disagree. I think it's a very important
(05:20):
lesson for everybody. We've talked on this podcast a
number of times about how we need to draw lessons from the
witch trials and apply them today.
And the Crucible is really a helpful tool in learning, you
know, what fear does to people and how these investigations and
(05:41):
injustices can happen when people enter a panic or a frenzy
of fear. It's in the news if you want to
know more about how things are going for the Crucible in Fannin
County. Yes, which I find that it's
(06:03):
happening in a small North Georgia town very interesting
because one of the plays that we've recently discussed on the
thing about witch hunts, John Proctor is the villain.
We talked about that with Professor Jane Barnett and the
(06:24):
playwright there, Kimberly Bellflower is from a small town
in North Georgia. And so the play is set in what's
identified as a one stop line town in North Georgia.
And Fannin County has very lightpopulation density.
(06:45):
You know, you hate to see censorship of something that's
already saturated our culture and just to sour the experience
for the drama students and the community, and I hope that
things improve there. Indeed.
(07:07):
Now, a lot of historians will talk about the inaccuracies in
the Crucible, but before we get to what's different between the
Crucible and Salem, I want to talk about what's actually the
same. And one of the things that I
find to be very good and true about The Crucible, or at least
(07:30):
it rings true, is the whole spirit of the witch hunt is
really captured in the play and the films and the emotions of
the events and the individuals involved are really encapsulated
well in this drama. The Magistrate Danforth, who is
(07:53):
representing all of our magistrates from 1692 to 93 in
one embodiment, has a great quote.
Quote the devil will not rule over one single inch of
Massachusetts and that encapsulates the existential
threat that was feared as. It's true, as appears in the
(08:18):
writings of Cotton Mather, that there was a panic about the
devil conquering the church and the state in the New England
colonies. Another thing I find very
accurate about The Crucible is the reasons that are given for
accusations. You see very clearly dramatized
(08:42):
cause and effect. So and so gets mad at neighbors
for animals eating up her food and says, you know, you all go
to the devil and that's interpreted as a curse.
So she's rested. Just all these different
accusations that are shown in the Crucible have some basis in
(09:06):
real accusations from 1692. Crowded courts.
We know from lots of great records and literature and non
fiction how crowded the space was, where they were examining
(09:26):
the alleged witches, how crowdedthe spaces were, were the
afflicted girls were being afflicted.
The courts were full of commotion and noise and there
was all these personalities clashing.
I mean it was just chaos, a lot like what we see in the first
(09:47):
school. Yeah, from the first examination
right through the last trial, the afflicted people were
present in court as they are in the Crucible and making all
kinds of noise, fainting, getting pricked by pins.
They say all these different things happening in these fits
(10:11):
that are used as some of the evidence against the alleged
witches. This what is happening in the
courtroom, is actually what the accused end up being indicted
for. They're not indicted for
anything that happens before they get arrested.
(10:33):
They're indicted for what happens during their examination
in the meeting house in Salem Village, in the townhouse in
Salem, sometimes in a Tavern. These examinations were held in
various locations, but they werealways crowded and always full
(10:53):
of this noise. One of my favorite scenes that
it is in the Crucible, and it's also in the newer play, which is
in Salem and pretty much right out of the examinations is the
spectral attacks and images in the examination, like in the
(11:16):
court. So you've got the evil birds.
You've got when they turn on Mary Warren and they see her,
her specter, like, I, I feel like that really helps capture
the high intensity of what the afflictions were doing.
(11:37):
And, you know, just thinking about those accused persons
sitting there, you know, having this happen around them and
they're to be blamed for it. Yeah.
And to Mary Warren, I'm so glad you brought Mary Warren up,
because The Crucible is historically accurate to a
(11:58):
degree in the portrayal of Mary Warren.
She did work for the proctors and early on she was an
afflicted person, but then she changed her mind temporarily.
And when she changed her mind and said that the accusers, the
afflicted persons, were making up these things about the
(12:19):
spectres that happened in both real life and the Crucible, the
afflicted people turned on her and she got accused.
And she actually got arrested inreal life and thrown in jail for
a little while until she switched sides again and be
worked for the afflicted accusing other people.
(12:41):
So we've discussed a lot of the similarities between the
Crucible and the real life Salemwitch trials.
Now we want to talk a little bitabout what's different.
One thing that clearly stands out when you watch the Crucible
is that the timetable is all shifted and it's compressed, so
(13:03):
things happen a lot quicker. And this is basically just for
story purposes. You're telling this in a 2 hour
period trying to condense the whole Salem witch trials.
So of course, they've got to, you know, cut out most of the
days that happen and make it allfit.
(13:24):
Another really fundamental difference between the real
Salem witch trials and the Crucible.
It comes down to the confessions.
In the Crucible, confessing saves your life.
In reality, we know that people who confess were condemned to
(13:46):
die and Chief Justice William Stoughton signed death warrants
for them to die on or about February 1st, 1693.
But they survived because Governor William Phipps issued a
last minute reprieve. So it's basically, you know,
that Governor pardoning or granting clemency to the death
(14:08):
row inmate at the last minute. Yeah, so it's not our opinion
that Confessions didn't save their lives.
It's literally in how it played out because there is some books
and articles and people do oftenstill convey the story with
(14:30):
these confessions saving lives, but that is a strictly Crucible
element. It isn't from the real story.
That's very true. And one last thing I'd like to
point out on the confessions is that Samuel Word, well,
confessed to witchcraft. He did recant at the last minute
(14:54):
and then they hanged him. So one person who confessed was
actually executed. It didn't save his life to have
confessed. And we know that these other
individuals were condemned to die and they had confessed.
(15:15):
In The Crucible, the story begins with a very particular
problem and cause for afflictions in real life.
We don't know why the girls wereafflicted or behaved as if they
were bewitched. We do know that it was not ergot
(15:35):
poisoning because girls with afflictions was a very common
component to witch hunts before Salem in other communities.
So that that's just one one little reason you can cross off
their gut poisoning, but it doesn't matter that much to
(15:58):
understand why these witch huntsweren't OK.
Instead, we must understand why adults went along with what the
afflicted set. Yes, that's very important.
We need to know why the accusations were actually
leveled against the people they were levelled against, and
understanding the reasoning, themindset of the individual adults
(16:24):
who entered complaints gave testimony.
That's important to understanding why the witch hunt
actually happened the way that it did and why this full panic
happened. As we talked about, the
beginning of the Crucible is different than the beginning of
(16:45):
the suspicions of witchcraft in Salem Village in 1692.
In the Crucible, the girls are bewitched because Minister
Samuel Parris finds them dancingin the woods around a kettle or
cauldron, and there's something boiling in there.
(17:10):
And he believes that magic is being done, that Tituba in
particular is teaching some formof voodoo magic to the children.
And we'd know that is nowhere inthe record that Tituba ever
practiced any form of magic other than the English
(17:32):
witchcraft that she followed at the behest of Mary Sibley in
late February of 1692 when she baked the witch cake.
There is, though, in Tituba's confession, I'll use that term
loosely, she confessed. It seemed to have been forced
(17:54):
out of her one way or another, coerced or through violence
possibly. But when she confessed, she said
that she had learned magic from her previous mistress in her
previous country, which was Barbados.
But that would have been an English woman who was her
(18:15):
mistress down there. And so any magic that she was
involved in was under the instruction of English people,
and it was English folk magic. There's a little bit to clear up
about the putt gums. Anne Putnam senior was not left
(18:35):
with one child named Ruth. She had many children.
She had experienced a recent pregnancy loss.
We do know that. But there wasn't a Ruth that was
in the midst of the afflictions.It was Anne Putnam Junior.
Yes, Anne Putnam Junior is one of the most well known of the
(18:58):
afflicted people. She was involved in dozens of
accusations, but we do know her mother did not lose 7 children
before at the age of 1. We also know that another
afflicted girl, Abigail Williams, didn't work for the
proctors and certainly didn't have an affair with John
(19:21):
Proctor. In reality, Abigail was the 11
year old niece of the minister Samuel Parris and she lived and
worked in his household and JohnProctor was a man of about 60.
The play and the film, they're very different in their
portrayal of Abigail and John, as far as we know, had no real
(19:46):
contact at all. There's no reason for them to
have contact. I do think in the Crucible with
that dynamic, it was really key to the personal struggle.
That he was going through ArthurMiller.
I mean, he built the story around that affair.
(20:08):
So you take that out, it's a very different play.
Yeah, then you're left wonderingwhy are they accusing In the
play, Thomas Putnam gets accusedof making land grabs.
We know that land grabs didn't happen in reality.
(20:28):
People didn't make an accusationand then somehow buy up their
neighbour's land. We do know that land disputes,
boundary line disputes that is, were entered into some of the
testimony. That was why people were angry
(20:49):
with each other and might have been a factor in some
accusations. But land grabs?
No, Sarah, why are we still fascinated with The Crucible?
Well, I'm fascinated because my great great great 9th great
grandmother is a character in it.
(21:11):
Though that's not the only reason I'm fascinated.
But why are we? Because my Google alerts, almost
every day I have some type of social media or blogs or book
that's being published or some news report that is mentioning
the Crucible and the productionsare all around us.
(21:34):
Yes, every day we get, we get these alerts about different
witchcraft topics and the Crucible is one of those.
And it's so often performed thatjust about daily we get some
announcement that it's being performed at this high school or
this college or this community theater.
(21:57):
There's evidence that we're still fascinated with this
story. And I think part of the
fascination is that there is actual witchcraft in the
Crucible, where we don't know about any actual witchcraft
happening in the Salem witch trials.
It just didn't happen. They weren't guilty of anything.
(22:17):
They were accused of afflicting people, covenanting with the
devil. That was just not happened.
Yeah, we recently did an episodeover on The Thing about Salem,
about the Salem puppets, and they were used in the courtroom
to egg on the afflictions of thegirls.
But evidence wise, you know, youcouldn't.
(22:42):
There's nothing showing that those puppets had any power.
Yeah, exactly. And the whole scene with Tichiba
doing the magic with the girls, Abigail Williams drinking the
blood, that all that stuff is sosensational and astounding that
(23:04):
people find that very entertaining.
And it's unfortunately become a bit of the lore about Tichiba,
but it is a reason that people are compelled to like the
Crucible. The afflictions are dramatic and
scary, and the truth is, with the witch trial history,
afflictions are dramatic and scary.
(23:30):
Yeah, and this is where the allegory works, even though it's
not based on the reality, because confessions of guilt
didn't buy you innocence or get you off the hook for witchcraft.
So. But in the Crucible, a
(23:50):
confession of guilt, you get forgiven and you do not hang.
So you either confess or you hang.
And that's similar to in the RedScare.
These committees doing these investigations put a lot of
pressure on people to confess tocommunism and working for the
(24:12):
Soviet Union, and they were pressure to name names in
exchange for lenience. And that happens in
investigations today, a crime happens.
An alleged suspect, you know, issitting.
We've all seen the video sittingat the table.
(24:33):
And there's that pressure, you know, get confessed, get it off
your chest. Tell us you did it.
Tell us, you know why you did it.
And I think, you know, as you know, culture, we're still
looking for justice. And do we find justice because
we hear a confession, even even if it isn't an authentic answer
(24:55):
to what's happened? Yeah, that's such a good point.
Confessions are still today coerced or they're taken under
some form of pressure upon the suspect.
And we know that false confessions to happen and people
go to jail for things that they didn't do based on this
(25:18):
confession because the confession is and was the gold
standard of evidence to convict somebody.
If they themselves tell the juryand the judge that they have
done this crime, why not believethem?
And it's easy to not conclude the investigation and consider
(25:43):
other evidence that might exonerate them.
Arthur Miller deserved a second Pulitzer for John Proctor's
confession. Especially if you, you know, are
enthralled in the story and really, you know, let it take
you to this chaos, in this struggle.
(26:04):
And then when John is pressured to confess, I just find that
confession so moving. It's the climax of the play.
It's so compelling and dramatic.There's so much tension there
and conflict, inner conflict within John Proctor and the
(26:25):
conflict within the community. It's highly compelling and
engaging. Edge of your seat kind of
theater. And what he says when he first
he confesses, then they say, oh,we're going to hang this
confession on the door of the church for everybody to see.
And he says, no, you can't do that because it'll ruin my name.
(26:50):
And you're going to I'm confessing this stuff.
Isn't that enough that I confessto you, but leave me my name?
They ask him you, why is he tearing up the confession and he
goes, because it is my name. Because I cannot have another in
(27:11):
my life, Because I lie inside myself to lies.
Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang.
How may I live without my name? I've given you my soul.
Leave me my name. Thank you, Josh.
That's so powerful and I hope itmakes people think about why
(27:34):
descendants are so not all, but a lot of descendants are so
passionate about having the names cleared of those who are
accused of witchcraft. Because as John, you know, he
his name was everything that really, really is and was the
case for these individuals and the tarnished name that they
(27:58):
forever had from these experiences for this powerful,
this damaging. That's such a good point because
if you were even accused, even if your case didn't go to trial
and you were never convicted of anything, just the accusation
(28:19):
hung on to you as a person and ruined your name for basically
the rest of your life. Your name is no good in the
community because of a witchcraft accusation.
We see this not just with Salem,but all witch trials, that
anybody who survives, their bodysurvives, but their name dies.
(28:42):
And that's what John was so afraid of, that his name was
going to die when he gave in this confession.
There's another quote from the story that I find very
meaningful and exceptionally relevant to today, Which also
(29:03):
John Proctor is quoted as sayingfrom the play, Vengeance is
walking Salem. We are only what we always were
in Salem. And I really feel like that same
statement can be said today. We are only what we always were
as humanity. Witch hunts are still happening
(29:24):
weekly across the globe in different cultures and across
time. They've continued to happen, and
that's happening because we're still hunting traders.
We feel betrayed sometimes by our loved ones or our neighbors.
And when that involves the fear of a curse due to many of the
(29:46):
same things that we see in history, sickness of children,
crop failure, you name it, it goes back to this.
That we always, that we are onlywhat we always have been, and
that's why we still are seeing innocent people accused of
(30:06):
witchcraft crimes that they're not committing.
And we continue to label people,to categorize them as the other,
as the enemy, as the unknown. And we fear the unknown, we fear
change. So new things, different ideas
(30:29):
easily get categorized as other and set aside.
And we find ways to deprive people once we label them as
other, demonize them, and we deprive them of their humanity
and their human rights. And we see this happening around
the world all the time in so many different ways.
(30:53):
Everybody can point to some kindof witch hunt that they've seen
in the media or maybe experiencefor themselves.
So we've mentioned that the Crucible is an allegory for the
Red Scare. Indeed, it's the second Red
(31:14):
Scare that it's an allegory for.There was a first Red Scare in
America at the end of World War One.
This was largely in response to the Bolsheviks overthrowing the
czar in Russia and implementing the communist system of the
Soviet Union. And there was widespread fear
around the world, but especiallyin the United States, which was
(31:38):
becoming a superpower at the endof World War One.
We'll have more about these Red Scares in future episodes.
I just want to summarize a little bit about this second Red
Scare, which is also known as McCarthyism or the McCarthy era.
And really it started before McCarthy became prominent.
(32:02):
And in 1947, President Harry Truman signed an executive order
that required that all federal civil service employees were
screened for loyalty. Loyalty meant that they were not
members in or had any affiliation with any
(32:24):
organization that the Attorney General a turn to be
totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive.
Or if they were advocating or their organization that they
were associated with advocated for the denial of constitutional
rights by other persons. Or they sought to alter the form
(32:45):
of government by unconstitutional means.
So all government employees for many years were required to go
through these loyalty tests. There was a loyalty board that
reviewed cases and thousands of government employees lost their
jobs because of this. Joseph R McCarthy.
(33:09):
Let's talk about February 9th, 1950.
He was sent to US Virginia to give a Lincoln Day speech to the
Republican Women's Club and Wheeling.
What he said that day became very shocking to the nation.
He claimed to have a list of members of the Communist Party
USA working in the State Department.
(33:32):
How scary and frightening. He attracted substantial press
attention for that, and the termMcCarthyism was born.
We've mentioned the investigations that were
happening in Washington during this era and in Congress.
The primary bodies that investigated the communist
(33:54):
activities were the HUAC, the Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee, and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations. Between 1949 and 1954, a total
of 109 investigations were carried out by these and other
committees. Yeah, and Hugh act the House on
(34:18):
American Activities Committee, or formerly known as the House
Committee on American Activities.
It's confusing. They gave it different initials
than the way it spells out. I know, but that committee was
actually born in 1938 and existed until 1969 when it
(34:40):
became the House Committee on Internal Security, and then that
survived until 1975, still doinginvestigations into subversives,
alleged subversive people in thecountry in various capacities.
HUAC is infamous for bringing ina lot of people from Hollywood
(35:01):
and the entertainment industry in general, but they also looked
at government officials and justprominent citizens.
And when you watch these hearings, which are really,
there's lots of access to them on YouTube or wherever have you,
you can imagine what some of these alleged witches were also
(35:26):
experiencing. These alleged communists were
not given an opportunity to defend themselves.
They were answering yes and no questions that were packed with
complicated facts. When Rebecca Nurse in any of the
other accused for sitting there,they weren't actually given the
(35:50):
opportunity to defend themselveswith answers to the magistrate's
questions. That's so very true because in
both they faced a presumption ofguilt.
They were peppered with leading questions, a lot of intense,
pressuring questions and statements were made that tried
(36:15):
to solicit confessions and also get people to name other people.
So you see in the witch trials and in these investigations all
this pressure to name names. Exactly.
Yeah. And then the results of the
(36:36):
witch trials and these Red Scareinvestigations were often the
same because people were branded, labeled and they were
blacklisted in colonial times. After a witch trial, if you were
tainted with an accusation, people didn't do business with
you. You could hardly get anybody to
(36:58):
trade with you so that you can get the things that you needed
to live. And with the Red Scare
industries blacklisted large lists of people.
There were over 300 people in the entertainment industry that
got blacklisted and nobody wouldhire them.
(37:20):
So there are fundamental features to figurative and
actual witch hunts and a great source on reading that is John
Demos. His book that he published
called The Enemy Within. Yeah, which you can see behind
both of us, The Enemy Within by John Demos.
(37:41):
He goes through in there many cases of witch hunts, both
literal and figurative, and finds the common features.
The first common feature that heidentifies is that there is some
actual basis that sparks the hunt in Salem.
It's not so much a basis in actual witchcraft, it's just
(38:03):
that the girls were actually sick and appearing to be
bewitched. They were suffering.
They they were actually sick with something, at least Abigail
and Betty in the beginning in January 1692, something was
going on with them. And then with the Red Scare, you
(38:27):
do see a handful, you know, maybe more than a handful.
But there were some communist agents actually working in the
US government. People like Alger Hiss were
exposed. So there was some basis that
there were actual communists in America and that there was a tie
to helping the Soviet Union at the expense of the US.
(38:51):
So the actual basis. So John Demos basically
identified 6 common features to witch hunts.
The actual basis we talked aboutthat a scare, something that
caused a panic. Third was this dramatically
exaggerated view of the enemy. 4th the witch hunt proceeds in
(39:14):
stages and starts with identification, then goes to
magnification of the enemy's characteristics and abilities,
features an intense and viral investigation of the enemy and
results in social exclusion. Now the 5th commonality is that
there is elite sponsorship from religious, economic, social or
(39:36):
political leaders and we see that in both the witch trials
and in the case of the red scare.
And then lastly, the 6th common feature is that there is
projection of one side's undesired qualities onto others,
as there is this push for purity, unity, and inner
(39:58):
coherence. So whether you're conforming to
Puritan standards or whether you're conforming to
Americanism, whatever that's defined as by whoever's making
the accusations. A few Soviet agents were
identified in Washington, but the threat they posed was
(40:20):
grossly exaggerated and the existential threat against the
US government was exaggerated. Likewise in witch trials in the
17th century here in the US, thethreat was grossly exaggerated
and the threat was covenanting with the double.
(40:42):
The charges were that these individuals, we're working with
the devil to cause harm on the community.
There's no evidence that can be presented to confirm that.
So we know that there were not actual witches in the Salem
Witch trials. Another feature that we have of
(41:06):
both of these panics is the power of the media.
The media can wolf fan the flames or it can suppress the
panics. You have things like in the
witch trials, incendiary writings and sermons that were
basically the entertainment of the day and people preaching
(41:28):
about how witches are around us.The devil's out around us.
This fans the flames of the witch trials.
When the witch hunt starts we see that also with the red scare
with different media. Some outlets were very
supportive of these investigations and anti
communism, while others were skeptical of what was going on.
(41:55):
You may have tuned into CNN recently for the live streaming
of the Broadway play Goodnight and Good Luck.
That movie was written in 2005. It is an account of Ed Murrow,
an editorial news anchor for CBS, and Ed is known for calling
(42:23):
McCarthy out on specific accusations and procedures.
In one of his news reports, Ed Murrow is quoted as saying
something that I find very valuable, he said.
We can deny our heritage and ourhistory, but we cannot escape
responsibility for the result. And that is something that we
(42:48):
all do experience, not being able to escape the
responsibility of our actions. And we know that Edward R Murrow
was right about McCarthy. McCarthy was full of it.
His accusations were proven to be false, and on December 2nd,
(43:08):
1954, the Senate actually voted to censure McCarthy.
The vote went 67 to 22. So overwhelmingly the Senate
decided that this guy was wrong and he deserved some kind of
punishment. After the censure of McCarthy,
(43:29):
his downfall fee committees thatwere doing these investigations
kind of lost their luster, but they still continued.
And Arthur Miller was actually called in to testify to the
House on American Activities Committee in 1956 and he brought
his soon to be bride, Marilyn Monroe with him.
(43:50):
So that made a big splash. Joseph R McCarthy died on May
2nd, 1957. But as we mentioned, these
investigations continued in the Congress for a while, though
they never were as impactful or powerful as they were in the Red
Scare. Thank you for joining us today
(44:15):
as we peel back many, many layers of the Crucible.
Maybe you have an ancestral tie too to the Salem ish trials, or
you've performed the Crucible, or maybe you have ancestral ties
to the Red Scare. What is that story?
Is that a story that needs to betold?
(44:38):
We would love to hear about it and we'd love for you to use
your platform to tell those stories.
So thank you so much for joiningus for this episode of The Thing
About Witch Hunts. As we mentioned, this is the
first in a series about the Crucible, so we will get into
more detail in future episodes about specific topics.
(45:03):
Check out our latest episodes onour new podcast, The Thing About
Salem. Good night.
And good luck.
Welcome to the thing about witchhunts.
I'm Josh Hutchinson. I'm Sarah Jack, and today we're
discussing The Crucible. The Crucible is the famous play
by Arthur Miller, the American playwright.
It premiered on January 10th, 1953, and Arthur Miller had
(00:25):
previously won a Pulitzer Prize for his other famous play, Death
of a Salesman, and he went on in1956 to marry Marilyn Monroe.
It is a dramatized and largely fictionalized story of the Salem
witch trials, and it came out ofthe same era that we.
(00:46):
Got. The book The Devil Massachusetts
from Marion Starkey, 1949 that possibly influenced his
inspiration and creativity. Yes, he came across that book
happily at the time when he was ready to write this new play.
(01:08):
And the other thing that it tiesin with is the second Red Scare
in America, known for McCarthyism and the House on
American Activities Committee, or HEWAC.
And he directly wrote The Crucible in response to one of
his friends being called to testify and to name names.
(01:33):
And after that happened to his friend, he drove to Salem and
started his research and got into all this witch trial
history that he used to shape the story.
Even though, as you said, it is dramatized, it's fictionalized,
but it's a very important allegory for injustice and witch
(01:57):
hunting in general. Going after people, labeling
them as other based on some flimsy suspicions, that kind of
thing. Outcasting who you perceive as
traitors. Yes, very much so.
(02:17):
Anyone you see as a threat to your existence, the existence of
your community, your country, we're supposed to not give in to
fear and allow panic to happen. And then these excesses and
injustices happen in these investigations, like the
McCarthy hearings and the HUAC hearings.
(02:41):
So the Crucible example is as important as it ever was.
And I want to point out, I believe he only had to drive
over from Connecticut, am I right?
That's right, he was visiting his friend in Connecticut and
then he just popped over to Salem.
Those two, they really always seem to connect somehow.
(03:03):
Somehow Connecticut witch trials, Salem witch trials.
There's links there, and commonalities of course.
We're going to jump into the McCarthy trials a little bit
more in this conversation, and it is important to have a grasp
of that history so you can see the allegorical meaning.
Like the witch trials, the McCarthy trials are made-up of
(03:26):
individuals and their stories ofaccusations and injustices.
So The Crucible has been seen extensively in live theater.
There's been multiple film and television adaptations.
It's also satirized in several other newer plays about the
Salem witch trials, such as Witches in Salem, and it's
(03:51):
evaluated and John Proctor is the villain and we have episodes
of The Thing about Witch Hunts about both of those 1 is coming
up and the other we've already done, so go check it out.
And I personally got to see a high school production of
witches in Salem. Speaking of high school, many
(04:12):
people know about the Salem Witch Trials through reading The
Crucible in high school English or Literature classes and
performing it in their theater class or drama club.
So it lot of people get exposed to it.
That's probably why the Salem Witch Trials are so well known
(04:32):
in this country and even abroad.The Crucible runs, you know, in
large theaters in London at times.
It's on the stage right now in aGeorgia high school.
Oh wait, it's not on that stage now.
Oh yeah, Fannin County High School in Fannin County,
(04:56):
Georgia, north of Atlanta. I guess some of the adults in
the community felt that the Crucible is a bit demonic, which
having watched it a number of times and read it, I
wholeheartedly disagree. I think it's a very important
(05:20):
lesson for everybody. We've talked on this podcast a
number of times about how we need to draw lessons from the
witch trials and apply them today.
And the Crucible is really a helpful tool in learning, you
know, what fear does to people and how these investigations and
(05:41):
injustices can happen when people enter a panic or a frenzy
of fear. It's in the news if you want to
know more about how things are going for the Crucible in Fannin
County. Yes, which I find that it's
(06:03):
happening in a small North Georgia town very interesting
because one of the plays that we've recently discussed on the
thing about witch hunts, John Proctor is the villain.
We talked about that with Professor Jane Barnett and the
(06:24):
playwright there, Kimberly Bellflower is from a small town
in North Georgia. And so the play is set in what's
identified as a one stop line town in North Georgia.
And Fannin County has very lightpopulation density.
(06:45):
You know, you hate to see censorship of something that's
already saturated our culture and just to sour the experience
for the drama students and the community, and I hope that
things improve there. Indeed.
(07:07):
Now, a lot of historians will talk about the inaccuracies in
the Crucible, but before we get to what's different between the
Crucible and Salem, I want to talk about what's actually the
same. And one of the things that I
find to be very good and true about The Crucible, or at least
(07:30):
it rings true, is the whole spirit of the witch hunt is
really captured in the play and the films and the emotions of
the events and the individuals involved are really encapsulated
well in this drama. The Magistrate Danforth, who is
(07:53):
representing all of our magistrates from 1692 to 93 in
one embodiment, has a great quote.
Quote the devil will not rule over one single inch of
Massachusetts and that encapsulates the existential
threat that was feared as. It's true, as appears in the
(08:18):
writings of Cotton Mather, that there was a panic about the
devil conquering the church and the state in the New England
colonies. Another thing I find very
accurate about The Crucible is the reasons that are given for
accusations. You see very clearly dramatized
(08:42):
cause and effect. So and so gets mad at neighbors
for animals eating up her food and says, you know, you all go
to the devil and that's interpreted as a curse.
So she's rested. Just all these different
accusations that are shown in the Crucible have some basis in
(09:06):
real accusations from 1692. Crowded courts.
We know from lots of great records and literature and non
fiction how crowded the space was, where they were examining
(09:26):
the alleged witches, how crowdedthe spaces were, were the
afflicted girls were being afflicted.
The courts were full of commotion and noise and there
was all these personalities clashing.
I mean it was just chaos, a lot like what we see in the first
(09:47):
school. Yeah, from the first examination
right through the last trial, the afflicted people were
present in court as they are in the Crucible and making all
kinds of noise, fainting, getting pricked by pins.
They say all these different things happening in these fits
(10:11):
that are used as some of the evidence against the alleged
witches. This what is happening in the
courtroom, is actually what the accused end up being indicted
for. They're not indicted for
anything that happens before they get arrested.
(10:33):
They're indicted for what happens during their examination
in the meeting house in Salem Village, in the townhouse in
Salem, sometimes in a Tavern. These examinations were held in
various locations, but they werealways crowded and always full
(10:53):
of this noise. One of my favorite scenes that
it is in the Crucible, and it's also in the newer play, which is
in Salem and pretty much right out of the examinations is the
spectral attacks and images in the examination, like in the
(11:16):
court. So you've got the evil birds.
You've got when they turn on Mary Warren and they see her,
her specter, like, I, I feel like that really helps capture
the high intensity of what the afflictions were doing.
(11:37):
And, you know, just thinking about those accused persons
sitting there, you know, having this happen around them and
they're to be blamed for it. Yeah.
And to Mary Warren, I'm so glad you brought Mary Warren up,
because The Crucible is historically accurate to a
(11:58):
degree in the portrayal of Mary Warren.
She did work for the proctors and early on she was an
afflicted person, but then she changed her mind temporarily.
And when she changed her mind and said that the accusers, the
afflicted persons, were making up these things about the
(12:19):
spectres that happened in both real life and the Crucible, the
afflicted people turned on her and she got accused.
And she actually got arrested inreal life and thrown in jail for
a little while until she switched sides again and be
worked for the afflicted accusing other people.
(12:41):
So we've discussed a lot of the similarities between the
Crucible and the real life Salemwitch trials.
Now we want to talk a little bitabout what's different.
One thing that clearly stands out when you watch the Crucible
is that the timetable is all shifted and it's compressed, so
(13:03):
things happen a lot quicker. And this is basically just for
story purposes. You're telling this in a 2 hour
period trying to condense the whole Salem witch trials.
So of course, they've got to, you know, cut out most of the
days that happen and make it allfit.
(13:24):
Another really fundamental difference between the real
Salem witch trials and the Crucible.
It comes down to the confessions.
In the Crucible, confessing saves your life.
In reality, we know that people who confess were condemned to
(13:46):
die and Chief Justice William Stoughton signed death warrants
for them to die on or about February 1st, 1693.
But they survived because Governor William Phipps issued a
last minute reprieve. So it's basically, you know,
that Governor pardoning or granting clemency to the death
(14:08):
row inmate at the last minute. Yeah, so it's not our opinion
that Confessions didn't save their lives.
It's literally in how it played out because there is some books
and articles and people do oftenstill convey the story with
(14:30):
these confessions saving lives, but that is a strictly Crucible
element. It isn't from the real story.
That's very true. And one last thing I'd like to
point out on the confessions is that Samuel Word, well,
confessed to witchcraft. He did recant at the last minute
(14:54):
and then they hanged him. So one person who confessed was
actually executed. It didn't save his life to have
confessed. And we know that these other
individuals were condemned to die and they had confessed.
(15:15):
In The Crucible, the story begins with a very particular
problem and cause for afflictions in real life.
We don't know why the girls wereafflicted or behaved as if they
were bewitched. We do know that it was not ergot
(15:35):
poisoning because girls with afflictions was a very common
component to witch hunts before Salem in other communities.
So that that's just one one little reason you can cross off
their gut poisoning, but it doesn't matter that much to
(15:58):
understand why these witch huntsweren't OK.
Instead, we must understand why adults went along with what the
afflicted set. Yes, that's very important.
We need to know why the accusations were actually
leveled against the people they were levelled against, and
understanding the reasoning, themindset of the individual adults
(16:24):
who entered complaints gave testimony.
That's important to understanding why the witch hunt
actually happened the way that it did and why this full panic
happened. As we talked about, the
beginning of the Crucible is different than the beginning of
(16:45):
the suspicions of witchcraft in Salem Village in 1692.
In the Crucible, the girls are bewitched because Minister
Samuel Parris finds them dancingin the woods around a kettle or
cauldron, and there's something boiling in there.
(17:10):
And he believes that magic is being done, that Tituba in
particular is teaching some formof voodoo magic to the children.
And we'd know that is nowhere inthe record that Tituba ever
practiced any form of magic other than the English
(17:32):
witchcraft that she followed at the behest of Mary Sibley in
late February of 1692 when she baked the witch cake.
There is, though, in Tituba's confession, I'll use that term
loosely, she confessed. It seemed to have been forced
(17:54):
out of her one way or another, coerced or through violence
possibly. But when she confessed, she said
that she had learned magic from her previous mistress in her
previous country, which was Barbados.
But that would have been an English woman who was her
(18:15):
mistress down there. And so any magic that she was
involved in was under the instruction of English people,
and it was English folk magic. There's a little bit to clear up
about the putt gums. Anne Putnam senior was not left
(18:35):
with one child named Ruth. She had many children.
She had experienced a recent pregnancy loss.
We do know that. But there wasn't a Ruth that was
in the midst of the afflictions.It was Anne Putnam Junior.
Yes, Anne Putnam Junior is one of the most well known of the
(18:58):
afflicted people. She was involved in dozens of
accusations, but we do know her mother did not lose 7 children
before at the age of 1. We also know that another
afflicted girl, Abigail Williams, didn't work for the
proctors and certainly didn't have an affair with John
(19:21):
Proctor. In reality, Abigail was the 11
year old niece of the minister Samuel Parris and she lived and
worked in his household and JohnProctor was a man of about 60.
The play and the film, they're very different in their
portrayal of Abigail and John, as far as we know, had no real
(19:46):
contact at all. There's no reason for them to
have contact. I do think in the Crucible with
that dynamic, it was really key to the personal struggle.
That he was going through ArthurMiller.
I mean, he built the story around that affair.
(20:08):
So you take that out, it's a very different play.
Yeah, then you're left wonderingwhy are they accusing In the
play, Thomas Putnam gets accusedof making land grabs.
We know that land grabs didn't happen in reality.
(20:28):
People didn't make an accusationand then somehow buy up their
neighbour's land. We do know that land disputes,
boundary line disputes that is, were entered into some of the
testimony. That was why people were angry
(20:49):
with each other and might have been a factor in some
accusations. But land grabs?
No, Sarah, why are we still fascinated with The Crucible?
Well, I'm fascinated because my great great great 9th great
grandmother is a character in it.
(21:11):
Though that's not the only reason I'm fascinated.
But why are we? Because my Google alerts, almost
every day I have some type of social media or blogs or book
that's being published or some news report that is mentioning
the Crucible and the productionsare all around us.
(21:34):
Yes, every day we get, we get these alerts about different
witchcraft topics and the Crucible is one of those.
And it's so often performed thatjust about daily we get some
announcement that it's being performed at this high school or
this college or this community theater.
(21:57):
There's evidence that we're still fascinated with this
story. And I think part of the
fascination is that there is actual witchcraft in the
Crucible, where we don't know about any actual witchcraft
happening in the Salem witch trials.
It just didn't happen. They weren't guilty of anything.
(22:17):
They were accused of afflicting people, covenanting with the
devil. That was just not happened.
Yeah, we recently did an episodeover on The Thing about Salem,
about the Salem puppets, and they were used in the courtroom
to egg on the afflictions of thegirls.
But evidence wise, you know, youcouldn't.
(22:42):
There's nothing showing that those puppets had any power.
Yeah, exactly. And the whole scene with Tichiba
doing the magic with the girls, Abigail Williams drinking the
blood, that all that stuff is sosensational and astounding that
(23:04):
people find that very entertaining.
And it's unfortunately become a bit of the lore about Tichiba,
but it is a reason that people are compelled to like the
Crucible. The afflictions are dramatic and
scary, and the truth is, with the witch trial history,
afflictions are dramatic and scary.
(23:30):
Yeah, and this is where the allegory works, even though it's
not based on the reality, because confessions of guilt
didn't buy you innocence or get you off the hook for witchcraft.
So. But in the Crucible, a
(23:50):
confession of guilt, you get forgiven and you do not hang.
So you either confess or you hang.
And that's similar to in the RedScare.
These committees doing these investigations put a lot of
pressure on people to confess tocommunism and working for the
(24:12):
Soviet Union, and they were pressure to name names in
exchange for lenience. And that happens in
investigations today, a crime happens.
An alleged suspect, you know, issitting.
We've all seen the video sittingat the table.
(24:33):
And there's that pressure, you know, get confessed, get it off
your chest. Tell us you did it.
Tell us, you know why you did it.
And I think, you know, as you know, culture, we're still
looking for justice. And do we find justice because
we hear a confession, even even if it isn't an authentic answer
(24:55):
to what's happened? Yeah, that's such a good point.
Confessions are still today coerced or they're taken under
some form of pressure upon the suspect.
And we know that false confessions to happen and people
go to jail for things that they didn't do based on this
(25:18):
confession because the confession is and was the gold
standard of evidence to convict somebody.
If they themselves tell the juryand the judge that they have
done this crime, why not believethem?
And it's easy to not conclude the investigation and consider
(25:43):
other evidence that might exonerate them.
Arthur Miller deserved a second Pulitzer for John Proctor's
confession. Especially if you, you know, are
enthralled in the story and really, you know, let it take
you to this chaos, in this struggle.
(26:04):
And then when John is pressured to confess, I just find that
confession so moving. It's the climax of the play.
It's so compelling and dramatic.There's so much tension there
and conflict, inner conflict within John Proctor and the
(26:25):
conflict within the community. It's highly compelling and
engaging. Edge of your seat kind of
theater. And what he says when he first
he confesses, then they say, oh,we're going to hang this
confession on the door of the church for everybody to see.
And he says, no, you can't do that because it'll ruin my name.
(26:50):
And you're going to I'm confessing this stuff.
Isn't that enough that I confessto you, but leave me my name?
They ask him you, why is he tearing up the confession and he
goes, because it is my name. Because I cannot have another in
(27:11):
my life, Because I lie inside myself to lies.
Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang.
How may I live without my name? I've given you my soul.
Leave me my name. Thank you, Josh.
That's so powerful and I hope itmakes people think about why
(27:34):
descendants are so not all, but a lot of descendants are so
passionate about having the names cleared of those who are
accused of witchcraft. Because as John, you know, he
his name was everything that really, really is and was the
case for these individuals and the tarnished name that they
(27:58):
forever had from these experiences for this powerful,
this damaging. That's such a good point because
if you were even accused, even if your case didn't go to trial
and you were never convicted of anything, just the accusation
(28:19):
hung on to you as a person and ruined your name for basically
the rest of your life. Your name is no good in the
community because of a witchcraft accusation.
We see this not just with Salem,but all witch trials, that
anybody who survives, their bodysurvives, but their name dies.
(28:42):
And that's what John was so afraid of, that his name was
going to die when he gave in this confession.
There's another quote from the story that I find very
meaningful and exceptionally relevant to today, Which also
(29:03):
John Proctor is quoted as sayingfrom the play, Vengeance is
walking Salem. We are only what we always were
in Salem. And I really feel like that same
statement can be said today. We are only what we always were
as humanity. Witch hunts are still happening
(29:24):
weekly across the globe in different cultures and across
time. They've continued to happen, and
that's happening because we're still hunting traders.
We feel betrayed sometimes by our loved ones or our neighbors.
And when that involves the fear of a curse due to many of the
(29:46):
same things that we see in history, sickness of children,
crop failure, you name it, it goes back to this.
That we always, that we are onlywhat we always have been, and
that's why we still are seeing innocent people accused of
(30:06):
witchcraft crimes that they're not committing.
And we continue to label people,to categorize them as the other,
as the enemy, as the unknown. And we fear the unknown, we fear
change. So new things, different ideas
(30:29):
easily get categorized as other and set aside.
And we find ways to deprive people once we label them as
other, demonize them, and we deprive them of their humanity
and their human rights. And we see this happening around
the world all the time in so many different ways.
(30:53):
Everybody can point to some kindof witch hunt that they've seen
in the media or maybe experiencefor themselves.
So we've mentioned that the Crucible is an allegory for the
Red Scare. Indeed, it's the second Red
(31:14):
Scare that it's an allegory for.There was a first Red Scare in
America at the end of World War One.
This was largely in response to the Bolsheviks overthrowing the
czar in Russia and implementing the communist system of the
Soviet Union. And there was widespread fear
around the world, but especiallyin the United States, which was
(31:38):
becoming a superpower at the endof World War One.
We'll have more about these Red Scares in future episodes.
I just want to summarize a little bit about this second Red
Scare, which is also known as McCarthyism or the McCarthy era.
And really it started before McCarthy became prominent.
(32:02):
And in 1947, President Harry Truman signed an executive order
that required that all federal civil service employees were
screened for loyalty. Loyalty meant that they were not
members in or had any affiliation with any
(32:24):
organization that the Attorney General a turn to be
totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive.
Or if they were advocating or their organization that they
were associated with advocated for the denial of constitutional
rights by other persons. Or they sought to alter the form
(32:45):
of government by unconstitutional means.
So all government employees for many years were required to go
through these loyalty tests. There was a loyalty board that
reviewed cases and thousands of government employees lost their
jobs because of this. Joseph R McCarthy.
(33:09):
Let's talk about February 9th, 1950.
He was sent to US Virginia to give a Lincoln Day speech to the
Republican Women's Club and Wheeling.
What he said that day became very shocking to the nation.
He claimed to have a list of members of the Communist Party
USA working in the State Department.
(33:32):
How scary and frightening. He attracted substantial press
attention for that, and the termMcCarthyism was born.
We've mentioned the investigations that were
happening in Washington during this era and in Congress.
The primary bodies that investigated the communist
(33:54):
activities were the HUAC, the Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee, and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations. Between 1949 and 1954, a total
of 109 investigations were carried out by these and other
committees. Yeah, and Hugh act the House on
(34:18):
American Activities Committee, or formerly known as the House
Committee on American Activities.
It's confusing. They gave it different initials
than the way it spells out. I know, but that committee was
actually born in 1938 and existed until 1969 when it
(34:40):
became the House Committee on Internal Security, and then that
survived until 1975, still doinginvestigations into subversives,
alleged subversive people in thecountry in various capacities.
HUAC is infamous for bringing ina lot of people from Hollywood
(35:01):
and the entertainment industry in general, but they also looked
at government officials and justprominent citizens.
And when you watch these hearings, which are really,
there's lots of access to them on YouTube or wherever have you,
you can imagine what some of these alleged witches were also
(35:26):
experiencing. These alleged communists were
not given an opportunity to defend themselves.
They were answering yes and no questions that were packed with
complicated facts. When Rebecca Nurse in any of the
other accused for sitting there,they weren't actually given the
(35:50):
opportunity to defend themselveswith answers to the magistrate's
questions. That's so very true because in
both they faced a presumption ofguilt.
They were peppered with leading questions, a lot of intense,
pressuring questions and statements were made that tried
(36:15):
to solicit confessions and also get people to name other people.
So you see in the witch trials and in these investigations all
this pressure to name names. Exactly.
Yeah. And then the results of the
(36:36):
witch trials and these Red Scareinvestigations were often the
same because people were branded, labeled and they were
blacklisted in colonial times. After a witch trial, if you were
tainted with an accusation, people didn't do business with
you. You could hardly get anybody to
(36:58):
trade with you so that you can get the things that you needed
to live. And with the Red Scare
industries blacklisted large lists of people.
There were over 300 people in the entertainment industry that
got blacklisted and nobody wouldhire them.
(37:20):
So there are fundamental features to figurative and
actual witch hunts and a great source on reading that is John
Demos. His book that he published
called The Enemy Within. Yeah, which you can see behind
both of us, The Enemy Within by John Demos.
(37:41):
He goes through in there many cases of witch hunts, both
literal and figurative, and finds the common features.
The first common feature that heidentifies is that there is some
actual basis that sparks the hunt in Salem.
It's not so much a basis in actual witchcraft, it's just
(38:03):
that the girls were actually sick and appearing to be
bewitched. They were suffering.
They they were actually sick with something, at least Abigail
and Betty in the beginning in January 1692, something was
going on with them. And then with the Red Scare, you
(38:27):
do see a handful, you know, maybe more than a handful.
But there were some communist agents actually working in the
US government. People like Alger Hiss were
exposed. So there was some basis that
there were actual communists in America and that there was a tie
to helping the Soviet Union at the expense of the US.
(38:51):
So the actual basis. So John Demos basically
identified 6 common features to witch hunts.
The actual basis we talked aboutthat a scare, something that
caused a panic. Third was this dramatically
exaggerated view of the enemy. 4th the witch hunt proceeds in
(39:14):
stages and starts with identification, then goes to
magnification of the enemy's characteristics and abilities,
features an intense and viral investigation of the enemy and
results in social exclusion. Now the 5th commonality is that
there is elite sponsorship from religious, economic, social or
(39:36):
political leaders and we see that in both the witch trials
and in the case of the red scare.
And then lastly, the 6th common feature is that there is
projection of one side's undesired qualities onto others,
as there is this push for purity, unity, and inner
(39:58):
coherence. So whether you're conforming to
Puritan standards or whether you're conforming to
Americanism, whatever that's defined as by whoever's making
the accusations. A few Soviet agents were
identified in Washington, but the threat they posed was
(40:20):
grossly exaggerated and the existential threat against the
US government was exaggerated. Likewise in witch trials in the
17th century here in the US, thethreat was grossly exaggerated
and the threat was covenanting with the double.
(40:42):
The charges were that these individuals, we're working with
the devil to cause harm on the community.
There's no evidence that can be presented to confirm that.
So we know that there were not actual witches in the Salem
Witch trials. Another feature that we have of
(41:06):
both of these panics is the power of the media.
The media can wolf fan the flames or it can suppress the
panics. You have things like in the
witch trials, incendiary writings and sermons that were
basically the entertainment of the day and people preaching
(41:28):
about how witches are around us.The devil's out around us.
This fans the flames of the witch trials.
When the witch hunt starts we see that also with the red scare
with different media. Some outlets were very
supportive of these investigations and anti
communism, while others were skeptical of what was going on.
(41:55):
You may have tuned into CNN recently for the live streaming
of the Broadway play Goodnight and Good Luck.
That movie was written in 2005. It is an account of Ed Murrow,
an editorial news anchor for CBS, and Ed is known for calling
(42:23):
McCarthy out on specific accusations and procedures.
In one of his news reports, Ed Murrow is quoted as saying
something that I find very valuable, he said.
We can deny our heritage and ourhistory, but we cannot escape
responsibility for the result. And that is something that we
(42:48):
all do experience, not being able to escape the
responsibility of our actions. And we know that Edward R Murrow
was right about McCarthy. McCarthy was full of it.
His accusations were proven to be false, and on December 2nd,
(43:08):
1954, the Senate actually voted to censure McCarthy.
The vote went 67 to 22. So overwhelmingly the Senate
decided that this guy was wrong and he deserved some kind of
punishment. After the censure of McCarthy,
(43:29):
his downfall fee committees thatwere doing these investigations
kind of lost their luster, but they still continued.
And Arthur Miller was actually called in to testify to the
House on American Activities Committee in 1956 and he brought
his soon to be bride, Marilyn Monroe with him.
(43:50):
So that made a big splash. Joseph R McCarthy died on May
2nd, 1957. But as we mentioned, these
investigations continued in the Congress for a while, though
they never were as impactful or powerful as they were in the Red
Scare. Thank you for joining us today
(44:15):
as we peel back many, many layers of the Crucible.
Maybe you have an ancestral tie too to the Salem ish trials, or
you've performed the Crucible, or maybe you have ancestral ties
to the Red Scare. What is that story?
Is that a story that needs to betold?
(44:38):
We would love to hear about it and we'd love for you to use
your platform to tell those stories.
So thank you so much for joiningus for this episode of The Thing
About Witch Hunts. As we mentioned, this is the
first in a series about the Crucible, so we will get into
more detail in future episodes about specific topics.
(45:03):
Check out our latest episodes onour new podcast, The Thing About
Salem. Good night.
And good luck.
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