The incidents of the Salem witch hunts were memorialized in 1953 with Arthur Miller’s award-winning historical drama, The Crucible. The play explored the searing test, the crucible of Faith and Honor, in the hearts of ordinary people targeted by one of the most notorious of all witch hunts. The setting was 1692, but the modern audience was brought vividly into that time and place.
The play was deliberately topical at the height of America’s “McCarthy Era.” The playwright took literary license with some minor facts of the actual 17th century events, but he states, “...although the play is not [classic] reportage... what I was doing was writing a story about an important theme.”
The “important theme” of Miller’s is clear. Written in response to Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee’s crusade against supposed communist sympathizers in the state department, military, and the film industry, the play drew world-wide notice to McCarthy's "hunt" with its interrogations and charges against well-known targets.
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy
during the hearings, 1950-1954
Aide Roy Cohen is to McCarthy's right
McCarthy died of acute hepatitis at the Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington in May, 1957. Ill heath plagued him after his censure by the Senate in December, 1954; he was 48 years old when he died.
Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy
November 15, 1908 - May 2, 1957
"He who does not study the past, is doomed to repeat it."
George Santayana
