The incidents of the Salem witch hunts were memorialized in 1953 with Arthur Miller’s award-winning historical drama, The Crucible. The play explored the searing test, the crucible of Faith and Honor, in the hearts of ordinary people targeted by one of the most notorious of all witch hunts. The setting was 1692, but the modern audience was brought vividly into that time and place.
The American witch hunts of the early '50s
Miller's play employs these historical events to criticize the moments in humankind's history when reason and fact became clouded by irrational fears and the desire to place the blame for society's problems on others... dealing with elements such as false accusations, manifestations of mass hysteria, and rumor-mongering...*
The play was deliberately topical at the height of America’s “McCarthy Era.” Arthur Miller explains he took literary license with some minor facts of the actual 17th century events, but the playwright states, “...although the play is not [classic] reportage... what I was doing was writing a story about an important theme.”
The “important theme” of Miller’s is clear. Himself attacked by Senator McCarthy, Miller wrote his play in response to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s crusade against supposed communist sympathizers in the state department, military, and the film industry. The Crucible drew world-wide notice to McCarthy's "hunt" with the interrogations and charges against well-known targets.
McCarthy died of acute hepatitis at the Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington in May, 1957. Ill heath plagued him after his censure by the Senate in December, 1954; he was 48 years old when he died.
Miller's play employs these historical events to criticize the moments in humankind's history when reason and fact became clouded by irrational fears and the desire to place the blame for society's problems on others... dealing with elements such as false accusations, manifestations of mass hysteria, and rumor-mongering...* 
