It Was Never About Witchcraft

A lesson

“You are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore.”
Arthur Miller, The Crucible

I am positive you are familiar with The Crucible and likely read the play in high school. I taught it in American Literature. We always read it in the first semester. Within weeks of the beginning of each year.

Before I started each school day, I read ahead in the play and wrote the name of each character on the board. The students were always a little reluctant to sign up for a part at the beginning of the unit, but by the second or third day, the kids were jogging to my room to sign up for a part before others could make it in the door.

They usually fought over the parts of John Proctor or Abigail Williams.

I tried to make reading the play coincide with Autumn because I couldn’t stretch out the curriculum to make it to October, much less Halloween, which is the season we usually think about when reading about witches.

It didn’t really matter, though. The play isn’t actually about Salem witches. Setting it in spooky season wasn’t needed.

The play is scary enough.

My American Literature course was set up much like a history course…it followed a timeline. It was linear. It was set up in that way so that students could understand the literature in the context of the time period, but The Crucible denied that timeline. It was set in Puritanical New England, but the play didn’t belong in that time period in the curriculum.

The play was about the Red Scare and Communism.

It was about McCarthyism.

It was about neighbor against neighbor and fear.

It was about America and hysteria.

Arthur Miller (who was accused of being a Communist sympathizer) wrote The Crucible in 1953 during the Red Scare. He wrote it to warn us against mass hysteria and to plead for freedom and tolerance in a time of fear and finger-pointing. It is a perpetual plea for persistent problems — the same issues we see today.

You likely know who and what were targeted by the Red Scare. Hollywood. Universities. Roosevelt and his New Deal policies that helped the common man. Every day people as well.

The Red Scare was a time of baseless accusations. Blacklisting. Ruining the lives of supposed Communists. It was political repression and free speech oppression. It was political persecution. It was scapegoating.

Sound familiar? I could be speaking of our current political climate.

History may not repeat, but it does rhyme.

I’ve been thinking a lot about The Crucible and witch hunts lately. I am positive you have heard of James Comey and the seashell incident…

“A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina returned an indictment charging former FBI director James Comey with making threats to harm President Donald J. Trump.”

Threats to the President? Comey posted a picture to Instagram with seashells arranged in a pattern to spell out “8647.” The caption stated, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

We all understand that a picture of seashells did not threaten the President, just as we all understand that the reason for the indictment is to intimidate and prosecute an enemy of Donald Trump. The man whom Trump feels slighted him. The one he feels is a critic of his regime.

Donald Trump is weaponizing the DOJ to destroy the reputation of James Comey and prosecute him for his lack of loyalty and fealty to the regime. He’s conducting a witch hunt.

Sounds familiar…

Just two days ago, FBI agents reportedly raided the office of state Sen. Louise Lucas, the Virginia legislator and leader of the state’s recent redistricting effort that likely won Democrats four more seats in the House of Representatives.

So far, there is no reason to believe that this raid is anything but political theater meant to harm the career and reputation of the Senator. The Senator who might just have helped the Democrats take back the House in November.

Last year, NY Attorney General Letitia James, the attorney who was successful in her civil fraud lawsuit against Trump, was indicted by a federal jury on mortgage fraud charges. The indictment was a sham. A fraud. An attempt to take revenge on an enemy.

The case against her was eventually thrown out.

And the hysteria of the regime in retaliating against Trump’s opponents doesn’t stop with people in his way — he is also attacking organizations.

The Southern Poverty Law Center was recently indicted and charged with wire fraud and bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering based on payments to informants who infiltrated white supremacist groups.

This is an outrageous indictment and seems as politically motivated as it can get. The SPLC recently criticized the Trump regime for ending federal funding for hate crime prevention and the regime’s effort to roll back civil rights and increase focus on “reverse discrimination.”

Another witch hunt.

There are a dozen more retaliatory actions I could have listed, but you see the theme. You understand the threat to democracy. You know the danger of giving a madman, a wannabe king, the power to use the DOJ and the FBI to retaliate against his political enemies.

Hysteria.

By the end of The Crucible unit, my students understood the dangers of a theocratic government and mass hysteria. They knew the consequences of destroying a reputation to consolidate power. They grasped the themes of intolerance and the fear of the unknown and the misuse of power.

I hope they remember the lessons all these years later.

My students would often ask why The Crucible is titled so, as the word is never uttered in the play. I asked them to look up the definition of “crucible” and report back on why they thought Arthur Miller would name a play about The Red Scare using the Salem Witch Trials as the setting, and they always surprised me with their well-thought-out responses.

A crucible is a severe test. It is also a container in which metals may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures. Both definitions apply.

A crucible doesn’t just melt and destroy. A crucible reveals. It’s a test of character and will.

Arthur Miller did not write The Crucible as a history lesson. He wrote it as a warning. It is not just about McCarthyism, but about every period that looks like it — like the moment we currently inhabit. The paranoia turned into policy and called patriotism.

The play was not a history lesson, but history is watching us. The crucible is a test, and it’s on all of us to make sure we pass it this time.

~Jess