"The Crucible" And Cartoon Commentary?
Please Read The Linked Political Cartoons And Blog About How They Connect With Arthur Miller's Intent For Writing The Crucible http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/fire.html This blog response should be completed by 2:30p.m. on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010.
posted by Greg T at Monday, November 01, 2010
27 Comments:
The political cartoons show alot of corruption in the government. These cartoons connect with the crucible because i feel as if the govrnment in salem was not right. The people in charge would believe anything the towns people said about witches.
I think that Arthur Miller’s intent in writing The Crucible was to show how certain conflicts in a society can easily become something they aren’t and how it has drastic effects on a community. From the political cartoons we are able to see a parallel of conflicts that depict the same destructive outcomes, we discovered in The Crucible. It shows how people can be easily convinced and manipulated to believe certain things that they fear and find threatened by. For example, people may find trust in certain political figures and automatically believe in what they say. The Political cartoon of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and his list of names of communists in the State Department expresss how informative possibilities can create larger issues. Overall I believe that corruption and misleading actions happen all the time, but Miller wanted to bring attention to the destruction that can be caused by misleading information and he wanted to expose how actions of manipulations can be detrimental to society.
Arthur Miller takes the idea of the Red Scare and puts it into terms that the average citizen can understand and comprehend. By writing The Crucible, Arthur Miller made the culprit of the entire scandal Abigail, much like McCarthy fathered the accusations to begin the communist scare in America. Much like how the Americans hopped on the McCarthy bandwagon, the children of Salem followed Abigail to stay innocent and be on upper hand, or so they thought. However, the truth always prevails, as shown in the Red Scare and in The Crucible. Arthur Miller simplifies the Red Scare in a play that everyone will understand so that Americans can get a better picture of why the Red Scare occurred and what happened as a result.
Arthur Miller's intent for writing The Crucible is quite obvious. He wanted to show how the corruption of government can lead to irrational events. Fear, self-protection, and manipulation play major roles in these situations. These themes are shown in the political cartoons. When many teachers were investigated during the postwar anti-communist campaign, authorities easily manipulated or exaggerated evidence to convict these people. In The Crucible, people such as Elizabeth were arrested with no reliable evidence. "If you can't crush the commies, you can nail a neighbor” is a perfect quote that describes both the Red Scare and the events that occurred in The Crucible. Black lists and further accusations were made to get the individual out of the guilty spotlight. Since the government encouraged this, the irrational events continued to get even more out of control.
These Political cartoons relate directly on how a government can corrupt a society and its people. The courts of Salem corrupted and caused more harm then they prevented just like a government is capable of doing in modern society. Even though courts in Salem and governments are meant to be a good thing, they can end up being counter productive.
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The one cartoon that really stuck out for me was the "You read books, eh?" It talks about how teachers lost there jobs because they were suspected communist. It kind of like the witch trial in the way that, once someone suspected them of being a commie, they were investigated. It seems both the accused witches and teacher were both being used as scapegoats.
The way that the government was described in the cartoon relates to what the city of Salem was turning into. Everything was going wrong and corrupt. It also shows how the government can not always make things better, but worse. It can have such an impact on the people and the city that things fall further apart and get worse.
i think that some of the cartoons are relating to the red scare in the united states and that people would sometimes go to extremes to put people behind bars to make other people feel more at home and not scared. Maybe Aurthor miller was trying to relate some of the ridiculous accusations against these preposed witches to the red scare and how the government thought that everyone was a communist until proven innocent. in one cartoon it has two men bringing in a side of a fench that accusses someone of being a communist, this ridiculous evidence is like some of the unseen evidence in salem.
The cartoon about the fire on the statue of liberty shows that hystaria can stop all rational thought. This will lead to people doing what ever they can to stop the danger. In the cartoon, it was to put out a fire that might spread, even thought the fire is made of metal. In the Crucible, the villagers would want to stop the "whitches" in the comunity and they would do anything so that they can feel safe from the treat that only exist because of hystaria.
All of the political cartoons have the same basic theme of fearing an idea, person, or action. One cartoon that I think shows this especially well is, “You mean I’m supposed to stand on that?” It shows that republicans are greatly fearful of the unknown and scary thought of McCarthyism. They have not yet truly explored the idea, however the automatically jump to the conclusion that it is the worst thing to have ever happened in government. Same with in the crucible, both sets of people make the problem larger in their heads then it is realistically. In both cases the higher power, government, reacts to an issue causing it to be blown out of proportion and worry the other citizens in a trickling effect.
No government is perfect, they are all someone corrupt. A lot of times, something on the outside can look okay and a majority of people will believe and think its right such as the witch trials in the Crucible. There was one cartoon about the USSR accusing a woman of being a communist because she reads books. In the Crucible people were accused of witchcraft for innocent things like reading as the woman was in the cartoon.
The corruption of the government in the times these political cartoons were made was not as severe as it was in Salem's government, but there is still a definite similarity between these texts. I think that when Arthur Miller wrote this play, part of his intention was to demonstrate the amount of corruption in Salem's government, which could have been his way of making a statement about the government during his time. The "Fire!" cartoon really stuck out to me as similar to The Crucible because it is showing that hysteria can ruin the foundation of an areas government, a country's liberty, for example. Hysteria can strike and take away rights and liberty in America, and obviously Salem as well.
Of all the political post I thought that "We now have new and important evidence," related to the Crucible the best. It mocked McCarthy for obscuring facts and not backing up accusations earlier stated in the case. In the Crucible the court only had the girls as evidence and did not consider that they might be faking and they didn't consider looking for further evidence. Also McCarthy made "reckless charges", similar to the charges made by the people in the Crucible, people just kept blaming each other so that they didn't get in trouble.
The political cartoons connect with Arthur Miller's intent for writing the The Crucible, because Arthur Miller was trying to relate Communism in America to witches in Salem. And these cartoons show just how similar the two really were, for example in "We now have new and important evidence," it says the court was made into a circus, and no matter what rumors were started, they were considered as "evidence." Just like the court in Salem, the girls made the place go wild and whatever they said and whoever they accused, it was considered true.
I think that the idea of hysteria and even innuendo play a role in both The Crucible and these cartoons. The conflicts in The Crucible became very destructive towards the community as well as the town and a lot of corruption was happening throughout the government. I think that the characters in The Crucible had an unspoken innuendo that came about because of the witchcraft hysteria. In these cartoons, Joseph McCarthy was seeking political gain and used smear tactics and innuendo to discover the communists in the government.
The topic of these Political Cartoons, communism accusations, relate to the Crucible because during both events, people were victimized under judgmental causes. In both situations, there was never evidence that a person was either a witch or a communist; it was all based on word of mouth. They are also similar because once a person was accused; they were basically hopeless at defending themselves because of the corruptness of the government. It’s as if both of these governments were more fearful of not having an answer then their answer being incorrect.
The political cartoons connect with Arthur Miller's intent for writing the The Crucible, because Arthur Miller was trying to relate the innocence of people to make them seem bad and skapegoat them for further problems going on within the town. In the political cartoon "Stand fast men-- They're armed with marshmallows" it is stating that the most innocent of people (Girl Scouts) are doing things that are "un-American" and should be watched just as the inncoent people of the town of Salem were treated as well.
A lot of the cartoons related to the reoccurring theme of hysteria and fear. The comics focused on the U.S's worry about communists while "The Crucible" focuses on the towns fear of the devil and witchcraft. When you compare the two they are both very similar. Arthur Miller most likely wanted to capture these themes by writing "The Crucible". The reason for this is that it has nothing to do with communists but the play reflects the same worries and feelings of fear that many people had.
Just like in the cartoon "We now have new and important evidence" the girls in the Crucible they are creating evidence that is false but will make eveyone else that what they are saying is true. In both incedinces it was a wrong thing to do.
The political cartoons are about the problems that had happened after World War II. These problems in the society can relate back to the problems that the society faced in The Crucible. Out of all the cartoons "You read books, eh?" related to The Crucible the most. In this they described how after the war elementary and high school teachers were being accused of being communism. This is like The Crucible where people were being accused of being witches.
A lot of the cartoons related to the red scare. This relates to the Crucible because In the red scare many people where accused of being communists they had no real way of proving they were not so if you were accused you got black listed. Like in the Crucible where people would be accused and if they did confess they would get black listed and their names would be ruined in the town. The cartoons also showed a lot of corruption of the government. In the Crucible there was definite corruption of the court. They only went off of one testimony. They expose how the judges would do anything not to loose creditability.
I think that the cartoons show a lot of corruption and shows that people will blame other people just for their own good and self protection. Just like the Cruicible because Abigail always blamed something on others and didnt care if they got in trouble or even put to death, as long as she was safe she was happy with herself. The cartoons alos show how many conflicts were created and how its hard to be resolved.
i know this is quite late, but i believe the two elements connecting the political cartoons to The Crucible are obviously hysteria and fear. they both ultimately effect the decisions/mind set and actions of individuals.
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The political cartoon that stood out the most to me was the one where innocent teachers were investigated for being communist, and they lost their job for it. We definitally see the same kind of actions goiung on in the cruciple with all of the blaming of withchary and all of the false accusations that had led people to confess to nothign that they did as well as not get to explain that hey had not commited any crime at all. Some were not able to be heard and suffered a punishment that they should not have recieved!
These cartoons relate to The Crucible because Arthur Miller has the same intension as they do, which is to ridicule certain aspects of the governtment. Each time that their is corruption in the govenment fear is usually present in the time period, Which allows the government to have more power than they should. Many of the cartoons relate to the red scare which was during the Cold War, which was when the Crucible was written. The blame and hystaria for comunnist of the time relates to the Salem witch trials.
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