Arthur Miller's Refusal to Testify Term Paper

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He was labeled for a belief that he did not openly admitted subsisting to; he was labeled based on the fact that he refused to testify against an ideology.

It is not surprising, then, that the primary message of "The Crucible" resonated his thoughts and feelings about the McCarthy administration's containment policy against Communism. The arguments he presented in the play showed how Miller viewed the government's offensive action against Communism not only futile, but reflection of how American society was slowly developing into: "...for good purposes, even high purposes, the people of Salem developed a theocracy, a combination of state and religious power whose function was...to prevent any kind of disunity that might open it to destruction by...ideological enemies."

This passage aptly described the American society's condition under the paranoid and highly-offensive McCarthy administration.

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Like John Proctor in his play, Miller refused to say anything against an ideology that, he believed, served as a buffer to capitalism, and other ideologies extant and prevalent in his society during that time. His refusal to testify did not mean believing in Communism, but rather, Miller just showed his respect for the Communist ideology, in the same way that he respected capitalism in American society, even though he did not thoroughly believed in its principles and effects on society and the individual. Miller's paradox, then, is illustrated when American government becomes the very tyrant it had always envisioned Communism to be. Perceiving that Communism suppresses people's freedom, American government sought to abolish Communism, punishing and persecuting individuals who were suspected of subsisting to or believing in it......

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