Arthur Miller's Rationale Behind the Writing of "The Crucible."

Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" is one of the best known American plays ever written. The book version of the play has sold more than six million copies, and the play itself is performed in theaters all around the world to this day. But why did Miller choose to base his play script on the Salem witch trials, an event that happened almost three-hundred years before his time. It is most definitely because that precise event …

…of an indisputable threat felt by the United States at the rise of the Soviet Union, just as the witch hunts were a genuine fear of the devil and his followers in 1692. Accordingly, it is apparent that the main reason behind Arthur Miller's writing of "The Crucible" was his desire to present his opinion of the Red Hunts, without directly linking those beliefs to the hunts, so as not to be accused of being anti-American.