The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 3 - Allegories Galore! - How To Incite Hysteria And Create a Bogeyman! - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

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

 

Crucible- episode 3

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Garry, what’s that famous Winston Churchill Quote 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Except, at this same time, America is getting neck deep into another war, at least that’s what we’ve come to call this stand -off between the United States and the Soviet Union. The cold war took on some of the vestiges of WW2- this good versus evil narrative from WW2 was in the minds of everyone.  Stalin, who one year before had been our alley, was feared as being something of the next Hitler- the next personification of evil and death- and of course, we know from history - the atrocities he committed if you just look at the numbers were far greater 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.  Of course, no one knows for sure, but documentation identifies this figure as upward of 12 million people.  Stalin was aggressive, he had  taken over countries in eastern Europe as well as Central Asia.  He had stripped Russians of their religion and made institutionalized atheism the state religion and he had a nuclear weapon.   He was every bit as ruthless and threatening to America in the 1950s as the devil was to the Puritans in the 1690s.  America after WW2 was immediately filled with fear. We were afraid of a war.  We were afraid of Stalin.  We were afraid of a nuclear weapon- all of these things are associated with communism- the form of government practiced in the Soviet Union. 

 

I remember my dad talking about that.  He told me they had nuclear war drills in school where they would hide under their deaths.  I can’t imagine how that would make a child feel, but I’m sure it wasn’t reassurirng that the desk would stop the a-bomb.  

 

No, I’d say not.  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’m going to debate and is not relevant to the Crucible.  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’re also afraid of communism and we’re afraid of atheism.     

 

And then la-dee-da- so enters our dear friend through stage left- kkkkk- it’s a metaphor- the left- Arthur Miller.

 

Oh yes, and btw- Miller is also an atheist. 

 

 So, It’s 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. 

 

I think that’s fair. 

 

Well- the parallel is already obvious.  It’s the power innate in fear and how changes behavior.  Just as the Puritans were afraid of the forest which to them  represents death, so too are Americans afraid of the Soviet Union and for them it represents death.  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. 

 

Exactly, and although there are plenty who will argue otherwise, I think, Miller wants to reduce these two historical events to an observation – for him quite personal we will see-  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.  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.  

 

There is one difference between the two events though, and I know this is on a lot of people’s mind-  the forest didn’t really kill people and witches may or may not have been real in Salem.  But weren’t Russian a  real thing during the Cold War?

 

Well, of course, and we’re going to name some here. But don’t 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’t see- also I am not ready to discount the idea that there weren’t really witches in the New World.  I think there is a tremendous amount of documentation to support that Puritan settlers were dabbling in the occult in various ways.  So, it’s not that there weren’t  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.     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.  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.  The hysteria led to an over-reaction of the threat at hand.

 

Well, it would be un-american not to over-react.  We are so good at that.  If you come to America and claim to be hungry, you’re 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’s it will have three meat patties.   

 

HA- true- but, beyond the tendency to excess in all things- but the root of the evil isn’t 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.  There is no indication at all that Putnam or Abigail were ever afraid of witches.  They weren’t afraid of witches at all.  They knew that others were.

 

  And in the same way there are motives to the backstory to American story of the 1950s.  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’s behavior in a direction that will serve their selfish interests.  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…and America had more than one- some were truly malevolent, others were likely naive.  Here’s a little more backstory, so in 1947, remember Miller’s breakout year with his first play, President Truman set up something he called a Federal Employee Loyalty Program.  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.  Now, ultimately this program didn’t actually fire very many people- only 212 for ‘questionable loyalty” although I will say 3000 quit under protest.  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.

 

Ha!  Sounds like Social Media.  

 

Well, in 1947, right after WW2, people were afraid enough to surrender their first amendment right of free speech.  They did it willingly because if there was anything we knew we didn’t want, we didn’t want Stalin or later Khrushchev to get the nuclear bomb and blow us up. We didn’t want to go to the Gulag or to re-education camp.  That much everyone agreed on.  It was a risk no one could take.    And so, malevolent people found the leverage they needed to manipulate the rules to their advantage.  A committee called the “House of Unamerican Activities Committee” had already been formed during WW2  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.  It had evolved way beyond its original purpose and now was making headlines because it was targeting, among other industries,  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. 

 

And there is the slippery slope.  Of course, to me, even the name of that committee sounds un-American.  It’s un-american to call something un-american- we’re a melting pot dad gum it?

 

Exactly- but again, we’re 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-  

 

 One of the first lines of the third act of the play that I really love,  Martha Corey has been dragged into court and they ask her if she’s a witch.  She says basically, no, I’m not a witch, I don’t even know what a witch is- and then with perfect circular reasoning- the judge says- than how do you know you’re not one.  

 

And that is exactly How all these hearings went- these same twisted lines of reasoning.  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.   Notice how the meaning of words is being manipulated.  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.  It’s quite a leap of logic- and not far from what we see in Act 3 of the Crucible.  Being a communist was also an invisible crime.  

  McCarthy, like Abigail, was ambitious and seemed all-powerful.  No one ever put the spot light on him.  He was a very powerful and convincing speaker and he played on people’s fears.  He relished the spotlight.  He coveted the fame he got from this. His power, just like we see with Abigail, increased to the point where he seemed untouchable.  If he came after you, you were sunk.  To quote Frederick Douglass here- To be accused was to be convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one always following the other with immutable certainty. To escape punishment was to escape accusation;  thousands of civil servants were accused- I want to point out here 100s of homosexuals were somewhat arbitrarily targeted– 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.  The logic was slightly different, but no less non-sequitor.  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.  At this time it was illegal to be a homosexual and work for the government.  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. 

 

Goodness, there are so many assumptions in that type of logic.  From the present moment, it just doesn’t seem possible that anyone would go for that.

 

And just like, Abigail, McCarthy seemed to have no moral compass at all.  He bullied people mercilessly, he got over 7000 people fired from their jobs and got some people killed.  People in front of the committee were made to name names- the committee wanted names of other Communist operatives.  And again this is where Miller ran into trouble.  He refused to give names.  

 

Before we talk about that, which is interesting, Isn’t it important though to make the comparison, where it may have been illegal, I don’t know to not be a Christian in puritan new England, it’s not a crime nor has it ever been a crime to be a communist in the United States.  

 

True, so McCarthy had to make a bigger connection- and he had a little help.  Because the truth was, the Russians were trying to infiltrate our government.  They did want our secrets.  They were aggressively taking  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.  The cold war was not a fictitious event.  It was volatile and violent at many points.  There was a man named Alger Hiss, in 1948, he was accused of having spied for the Soviet Union…and truth be told, the historical record has proven that he was indeed guilty.  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.  So, was it true that there were spies infiltrating  the State department?  No doubt, were people calling each other spies just to get rid of them- Salem-style- again that happened.   you can imagine the kind of impact the discovery of this actual spy ring had on the American psyche.  These three, btw, were tried, found guilty and sentenced to death.  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.  

 

The Crucible opened in January of 1953.  That explains why it ran into a couple of box office snags.  

 

Yes, and Miller had attended a communist conference, the Waldorf Conference in 1949.

 

Maybe not his most political savvy activity.

 

No, so the the Crucible opened in January of 1953, and response to it was direct and harsh- it tanked.  E.G. marshall who played Reverend hale was black-listed.  So was Beatrice Straight who played Elizabeth Proctor (although she cleared herself by paying $500).  Madelein Sherwood, who played Abigail was listed as a communist.  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.  

 

It’s like it was a prophesy and they were literally fulfilling the prophesies of the play.  

 

For sure, and going back to Salem for a moment, When I watch the play, I am struck by the immaturity of 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.  In these cases- both in Salem and in front of the HUAC committee, this process is reversed.  

 

 But fear is clearly not the sole driving force. In Act 3 when Proctor and Mary Warren challenge the truthfulness of the girl’s testimony, the judge is terrified that he's issued 79 death warrants.  And we see that courtroom hysteria is driven by things like the idea of sunken costs, attribution theory, and belief perseverance and 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. 

 

I look forward to that because that sounds like you’re reading a vocabulary list- but even here In Act 3 as we get into the details of how Miller wrote this trial scene it’s interesting to have in mind  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’re going to skip Act 2, scene 2 where Proctor and Abigail meet in the woods.  It’s 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.  In this scene, Proctor tells Abigail what he’s going to do.  Abigail says she’s glad Elizabeth is going to die and she doesn’t believe he will expose their affair.  

 

So- let’s 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.  I really find this scene painful to watch.  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.  It makes me so angry, I can barely stand to hear it.  

 

Of course it starts with martha corey, Giles wife been tried off stage where all we do is here what’s going on. It kind of gives it this creepy feeling.

 

I was  struck by the idea of the value of creating a boogey man that can't be clearly defined. In fact, it’s 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  rearranging and defining reality for other people. First, it’s the specters visiting her, then she stabs herself, eventually there is an invisible bird flying around the room.  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 chaos- his powers of suggestion and accusation almost go unnoticed.

There is so much irony here.  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.  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.

 

Christy, you’ve mentioned that a lot.  Just as a refresher, what is a logical fallacy.

 

It’s when the logic of any given argument doesn’t make sense.  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.  When someone says something that sounds like it makes sense, but really if you think about it, it doesn’t- you’ve been fooled by a logical fallacy.  There are dozens and dozens of these little tricks and people study for years to figure them out.  But there are big obvious ones are the ones Miller uses for example in this case- Martha says- I don’t know what a witch is, and then hawtorn says- then how do you not know you are not one.  Well, she is silenced, because she’s put on the defensive to think- how do I know?  Well, the logic is faulty. He didn’t offer proof that she was a witch- he just accused her in a slightly different way- like making a circle.   And this is the kind of garbage we see in every single one of these accusations. 

 

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’s 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’t the same and should not be compared.  Cain admitted to killing Able- Elizabeth didn’t kill anyone nor is anyone even dead.  I’ll show you a third one, but I won’t go through all of them- there are just to many, but you’ll get the idea, Later on when Danforth is bearing down on Mary Warren  over why she can’t 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’s why you can’t faint.  This is called an either/or fallacy- meaning, I’m 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’s a third option- she was able to faint before because she was hysterical and now she’s not.  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.  She sees a spirit bird- Mary Warren has sent her spriit to murder her right then and there.  Mary Warren turns on Proctor, accuses him of being the “Devil’s Man” and our antagonist seems to have won.  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.  Proctor will go to jail.  Hale has recognized this is a fraud.  Abigail seems to be ruling the day, and the audience is absolutely outraged.  They can’t understand how this happened. And yet, she walks away the victor!  And so smug about it- she won’t even answer questions there at the end.  How dare they question her.  

 

Garry, that’s my take on it.  What’s yours?

 

 let’s make our final comparisons to what Joseph McCarthy did in the 1950s- do the parallels?

 

Well, of course they work- and from the vantage point of history when we are not blinded by fear or hysteria- it’s obvious who is evil and who is stupid and who is a hero. .

 

In October 1947, when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) convened a hearing in Washington, D.C.,  41 screenwriters, directors and producers were subpoenaed. Most responded positively to the committee’s central question: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” And those who confessed to membership were offered the opportunity to name “fellow travelers,” 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.  They  refused- today they are called the Hollywood Ten. They were fined and sentenced to up to a year in federal prison.  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.  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’s appearance.  Their friendship was forever severed by this perceived betrayal.  It wasn’t long after kazan’s appearance before the committee that Miller was brought in.  After his appearance, He applied for a passport to go to Belgium for the opening of the Crucible.  He was denied his American passport, basically meaning his citizenship was taken away.  This was a way for the government to somehow officially declare Miller un-American.  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’s not a threat at all.  

Back to that pesky arrogance of the presence- Next week we’ll finish Act 4.  We’ll  start by talking about Marilyn Monroe- which although has nothing to do with the Crucible, is interesting and she did marry Arthur Miller. 

I know you’re excited about that tangent,  Christy, and we’ll finish with Miller’s final thoughts on this play.  This week we focused on the direct allegorical link to the American politics of the 50s but I want end with more of  Miller’s words.  This is an exerpt from the New yorker written in 1996.  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, “The Crucible” 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.”

I like that line- furies imbedded in the brain of social man- I guess that’s really true.  

And where we’ll pick up next week as we end this amazingly popular American play.  Thank you for listening this week.  Don’t forget to check out our social media.  Thank you for those of you who take the time to comment, review our work, email us or connect on Twitter.  We love hearing from all of you.  Special thanks to Ruth who gave us an amazing review on Linked in.  It’s when we hear from all of you that we’re reminded that although there are Abigails in this world, we are so very grateful it’s also full of kindness.  

So true.  Much love to every one of you and peace out!

 

 

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