How Did The Political Events Of The 1950's Influence The Writing Of The Crucible?

The crucible was written by Arthur miller in response to McCarthyism because in the 1950’s the US government had blacklisted all the communists and  the people were questioned for carrying out ‘un American’ activities, Arthur was himself affected by this. The US government questioned many citizens because it suspected them to have sympathies with the communists and these people suffered loss of employment and at times imprisonment. So to represent this, he wrote about this in his play and compared it to the ‘Salem witch trials’ that targeted a certain class of people without proper evidence, just based on suspicions.

Briefly, the major inspiration for "The Crucible" was the House Committee for Un-American Activities, which conducted a frantic search for Communist sympathisers led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Miller compared "McCarthyism" with the atmosphere of hysteria that caused the Salem witch - hunts.

You can find very detailed resources on this subject at researchguide.com if you click on "McCarthyism." I would also recommend Sparknotes if you haven't tried them already.

The main event to consider here is the Un-American Activities Committee, which tried to find evidence of Communist activity and got large numbers of writers, intellectual, actors etc sacked or blacklisted. Miller regarded the Committee and its leader, Joseph McCarthy, as examples of a kind of hysteria and mass panic that had also hit parts of America during the witch-hunt era. He modelled a  lot of the types of arguments, public mood etc in the Crucible, on the hearings of the Commoittee.

I found an interesting article by Miller himself, on how these events influenced him: You can find it www.writing.upenn.edu here. Sparknotes are also very good and you can find them online.