The Demons of Salem, With Us Still PDF

# The Demons of Salem, With Us Still ## Historical Context - As you read this article, keep in mind that Victor Navasky is the author of *Naming Names*, a history of McCarthyism. - The text depicts McCarthyism in a dramatically negative light. - Navasky's goal is to inform readers and support his...

# The Demons of Salem, With Us Still ## Historical Context - As you read this article, keep in mind that Victor Navasky is the author of *Naming Names*, a history of McCarthyism. - The text depicts McCarthyism in a dramatically negative light. - Navasky's goal is to inform readers and support his position on McCarthyism and *The Crucible*. - Navasky cites logical fallacies in McCarthy's political language. - What logical fallacy does a speaker commit by calling his opponents spies and "comsymps"? ## The Demons of Salem, With Us Still - by Victor Navasky - When Arthur Miller's drama *The Crucible* first opened on Broadway in 1953, the country was in a panic about the so-called Red Menace. - Senator Joseph McCarthy, with his reckless charges of spies and "comsymps", occupied the front pages, while behind the scenes J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the F.B.I., presided over and manipulated a vast internal security bureaucracy, issuing periodic bulletins intended to fan the flames of the domestic cold war. - In the center ring were the congressional inquisitor-investigators, asking "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" - At the time, Mr. Miller and Tennessee Williams were regarded as the world's two foremost playwrights. - But that lofty status was an invitation rather than an obstacle to the red-hunters who wanted to talk to Mr. Miller. - When he was finally summoned to appear, the committee chairman, Representative Francis Walters, let Mr. Miller know that things might go easier for him if he persuaded his fiancee, Marilyn Monroe, to pose for a photograph with the chairman. - Mr. Miller let that option lapse and was shortly indicted for contempt of Congress when he refused to answer the committee's questions about Communists he had known. - On the left, the hunt for subversives was routinely labeled a witch hunt, after the infamous Salem witch trials of the late 17th century. - When *The Crucible*, set in Salem in 1692 but written in the overheated atmosphere of the domestic cold war, appeared, two questions were quickly asked: - Was Mr. Miller's depiction of the inhabitants and events of 1692 Salem faithful to the original? - Was the original an appropriate metaphor for McCarthyism? ## Historical Context - Reread lines 61-78. - In light of his comment, would you say that Elia Kazan took McCarthy's mission seriously? Explain. ## Historical Context - Given her husband's role in the McCarthy hearings, why do you think Molly Kazan might have objected to Miller's comparison between HUAC and Salem? ## Historical Context - Reread lines 79-145. - Evaluate the objectivity of author Victor Navasky and of Molly Kazan and Arthur Miller, witnesses Navasky quotes in these paragraphs. - An objective writer or witness is an observer who weighs all the evidence without being swayed by a personal stake in the subject. - A subjective writer or witness has a personal involvement and is swayed by personal beliefs on the subject. - If you determine that Navasky or either of his witnesses is not objective, then carefully evaluate the evidence he or she presents. - Weigh all the evidence before drawing conclusions of your own. ## Historical Context - Reread lines 1-17. What details indicate the significance for Miller of finding Starkey's book? ## Historical Context - As you have seen by reading these selections, politics, journalism, and literature can share ideas from a particular historical context. - One article provides information on the McCarthy hearings; another addresses both the hearings and the writing of *The Crucible*. - The third provides personal testimony from Miller himself. - To synthesize what you have read, identify a theme or idea that runs through all three selections. # Timebends - by Arthur Miller - I had known about the Salem witchcraft phenomenon since my American history class at Michigan, but it had remained in mind as one of those inexplicable mystifications of the long-dead past when people commonly believed that the spirit could leave the body, palpably and visibly. - My mother might believe it still, if only in one corner of her mind, and I suspected that there were a lot of other people who, like me, were secretly open to suggestion. - As though it had been ordained, a copy of Marion Starkey's book *The Devil in Massachusetts* fell into my hands, and the bizarre story came back as I had recalled it, but this time in remarkably well-organized detail. ## Historical Context - At first I rejected the idea of a play - My own rationality was too strong, I thought, to really allow me to capture this wildly irrational outbreak. - A drama cannot merely describe an emotion, it has to become that emotion. - But gradually, over weeks, a living connection between myself and Salem, and between Salem and Washington, was made in my mind—for whatever else they might be, I saw that the hearings in Washington were profoundly and even avowedly ritualistic. - After all, in almost every case the Committee knew in advance what they wanted the witness to give them, the names of his comrades in the Party. - The FBI has long since infiltrated the Party, and informers has long ago identified the participants in various meetings. - The main point of the hearings, precisely as in seventeenth-century Salem, was that the accused make public confession, damn his confederates as well as his Devil master, and guarantee his sterling new allegiance by breaking disgusting old vows—whereupon he was let loose to rejoin the society of extremely decent people. - In other words, the same spiritual nugget lay folded within both procedures—an act of contrition done not in solemn privacy but out in the public air. - The Salem prosecution was actually on more solid legal ground since the defendant, if guilty of familiarity with the Unclean One, had broken a law against the practice of witchcraft, a civil as well as a religious offense; whereas the offender against HUAC (House Un-American Activities committee) could not be accused of any such violation but only of a spiritual crime, subservience to a political enemy's desires and ideology. - He was summoned before the Committee to be called a bad name but one that could destroy his career. ## Historical Context - Reread lines 1-17. What details indicate the significance for Miller of finding Starkey's book? ## Historical Context - As you have seen by reading these selections, politics, journalism, and literature can share ideas from a particular historical context. - One article provides information on the McCarthy hearings; another addresses both the hearings and the writing of *The Crucible*. The third provides personal testimony from Miller himself. - To synthesize what you have read, identify a theme or idea that runs through all three selections. # Timebends - by Arthur Miller - I had known about the Salem witchcraft phenomenon since my American history class at Michigan, but it had remained in mind as one of those inexplicable mystifications of the long-dead past when people commonly believed that the spirit could leave the body, palpably and visibly. - My mother might believe it still, if only in one corner of her mind, and I suspected that there were a lot of other people who, like me, were secretly open to suggestion. - As though it had been ordained, a copy of Marion Starkey's book *The Devil in Massachusetts* fell into my hands, and the bizarre story came back as I had recalled it, but this time in remarkably well-organized detail. ## Historical Context - At first I rejected the idea of a play on the subject. My own rationality was too - strong, I thought, to really allow me to capture this wildly irrational outbreak. - A drama cannot merely describe an emotion, it has to become that emotion. - But gradually, over weeks, a living connection between myself and Salem, and between Salem and Washington, was made in my mind—for whatever else they might be, I saw that the hearings in Washington were profoundly and even avowedly ritualistic. - After all, in almost every case the Committee knew in advance what they wanted the witness to give them, the names of his comrades in the Party. - The FBI has long since infiltrated the Party, and informers has long ago identified the participants in various meetings. - The main point of the hearings, precisely as in seventeenth-century Salem, was that the accused make public confession, damn his confederates as well as his Devil master, and guarantee his sterling new allegiance by breaking disgusting old vows—whereupon he was let loose to rejoin the society of extremely decent people. - In other words, the same spiritual nugget lay folded within both procedures—an act of contrition done not in solemn privacy but out in the public air. - The Salem prosecution was actually on more solid legal ground since the defendant, if guilty of familiarity with the Unclean One, had broken a law against the practice of witchcraft, a civil as well as a religious offense; whereas the offender against HUAC (House Un-American Activities committee) could not be accused of any such violation but only of a spiritual crime, subservience to a political enemy's desires and ideology. - He was summoned before the Committee to be called a bad name but one that could destroy his career. ## Comprehension 1. **Recall:** What was Senator McCarthy's mission? 2. **Recall:** What kinds of professionals were targeted by McCarthy's accusations? 3. **Recall:** What was the catalyst for Miller's interest in the Salem witch trials? ## Text Analysis 4. **Evaluate Statements:** Considering the historical context of *The Crucible* and Arthur Miller's own comments in *Timebends*, do you think Miller was really “blind to the world” when he wrote *The Crucible*? Support your opinion. 5. **Evaluate the Role of Historical Context:** Is knowing *The Crucible*’s historical context necessary to understand the playwright’s message? Explain. ## Read for Information: Synthesize #### Writing Prompt Think about the social and political conditions of the time during which Arthur Miller was writing *The Crucible*. In what ways has looking through this historical lens colored your understanding of the play? In developing your new analysis, support your thesis with information from the articles you have just read and details from the play. - The *Crucible* + Historical Context = **To answer this prompt, follow these steps:** 1. In a sentence or two, summarize how reading these selections, evaluating their objectivity and weighing the evidence they present has affected your understanding of the play and its historical context. Consider using this summary as your thesis statement. 2. In your notes, identify elements of the play that you now view differently. ## Reading for Information **Movie Review:** *Rolling Stone* magazine reviewed Nicholas Hytner's film adaptation of *The Crucible* in 1996. ## The Crucible - **Peter Travers** - Arthur Miller is the first to admit that *The Crucible* must stand on its own. - The playwright, now 81, sat near me at a screening of the film, unwittingly intimidating all around him. - For the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of *Death of a Salesman*, attention must be paid. - Miller asked for none of it. He talked with boyish zest of working with director Nicholas Hytner on re-crafting *The Crucible* as a $25 million film that would allow startling imagery to resonate with his language and burst the bounds of the stage. - Does it ever. *The Crucible*, despite some damaging cuts to the text, is a seductively exciting film that crackles with visual energy, passionate provocation and incendiary acting. - The great Paul Scofield is triumphant, avoiding the easy caricature of Danforth as a fanatic. He brings the role something new: wit. - We laugh with this judge, which heightens the horror later when he blinds himself to truth in the name of God and his own ambition. - The scene in which he ignores Rev. Hale (Rob Campbell), who knows the girls are faking, and bullies the servant Mary Warren (Karron Graves) into delusion and madness chills the blood. - **Director Nicholas Hytner with cast** - As the unforgiving wife whose "justice would freeze beer," in the words of her husband, Joan Allen is an absolute stunner in an award-caliber performance that is also a surprising source of warmth. - By the seashore, where the pregnant Elizabeth has come to say goodbye to her condemned husband, she tells John, "I once counted myself so plain, so poorly made, that no honest love could come to me." - Elizabeth's scene of tender reconciliation is the film's moral core. - John need only sign a false confession of witchcraft to save himself from the gallows. - Of course, he won't. "Because it is my name," he tells Danforth simply. "Because I cannot have another in my life." - In the film's most complex role, Daniel Day-Lewis performs with quiet power. - Playing nobility can make actors insufferable, but Day-Lewis keeps John Proctor human even when saddled with smudgy makeup and fake brown teeth for his final scene. - *The Crucible*, for all its timely denunciation of persecution masked as piety…comes down to individual resistance and how you search your heart to find it. - The years haven't softened the rage against self-betrayal in *The Crucible*. - This stirring film lets you feel the heat of Miller's argument and the urgent power of his kick.