In an essay on his 1953 play The Crucible, Arthur Miller describes the United States as having ‘drunk from the cup of suspicion’1 . This touches on a central yet rarely stated component of American identity: paranoia. Through the lens of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, The Crucible examines the origins and consequences of this paranoia across American History, portraying the United States as organised through opposition, exclusion, and a fear of ideological contamination. By setting his play against the backdrop of a Satanic wilderness, framing Salem as analogous to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of the McCarthy era, and finally incorporating a progressively more paranoid diction throughout, Miller’s The Crucible displays how cycles of exclusion and paranoia are a formative and driving aspect of American identity.

Through The Crucible’s opening narrative commentary, Miller establishes Salem’s physical setting in opposition to the surrounding woods: its ‘small-windowed, dark houses’ are juxtaposed with the ‘barbaric frontier’ that stands ‘dark and threatening, over their shoulders night and day’ (The Crucible, 1. pp 1-3). Opposition to this wilderness unites Salem, as ‘they combined; they set up a communal society’ which allowed them ‘the conquest of this space so antagonistic to man’ (The Crucible 1. pp 2-4). Miller then parallels this wilderness to a social threat: the people of Salem ‘believed that the virgin forest was the Devil’s last preserve,’ but that ‘they held in their steady hands the candle that would light this world’ (The Crucible, 1. p 3). Like the physical threat of the wilderness, opposition to the social threat of the Devil also forms Salem’s community, creating an ‘innate resistance’ towards any sects other than their own to defend themselves, ‘lest their New Jerusalem be defiled and corrupted’ (The Crucible, 1. p 3). The religious image of a new Jerusalem further emphasises Salem’s drive to preserve sanctity – the new Jerusalem of the bible is a heaven on earth, but this heaven is set in a woodland both physically dangerous and inhabited by a supposed Devil. Salem’s safety is thus constantly at risk of ‘destruction by material or ideological enemies’ (The Crucible, 1. p 4), and the desire to prevent this is what gives rise to Salem’s organised theocracy. By setting The Crucible within a wilderness that presents both physical and social danger, Miller thus portrays how Salem’s very formation is rooted in opposition to a threat of corruption

Miller then frames the Salem Trials as an analogy for the HUAC Trials, and reflective of a larger pattern of exclusion central to American identity. A later commentary observes that ‘[like] the others on this stage, we conceive the Devil as a necessary part of a respectable view of cosmology. Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas [...] are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer’ (The Crucible, 1. p 27). Miller directly addresses a first-person modern America that is analogous to Salem in its diametric opposition to the Devil. Despite the fact that ‘while there were no witches then, there are Communists [...] now,’ the commentary asserts that ‘people were communing with [...] the Devil in Salem’ (The Crucible, 1. pp 27-28). Salem and the HUAC are organised in opposition to equally real evils, and the exclusionary effects of this are shown in Salem. At the end of Act 1, Abigail claims that she ‘danced for the Devil,’ then declares that she saw Sarah Good, Goody Osburn, and Bridget Bishop ‘with the Devil!’ (The Crucible, 1. p 39). Rather than denying corruption, Abigail confesses by accusing others of being affiliated with the Devil. In placing the threat of exclusion on others, she redeems herself in ‘the light of God’ (The Crucible, 1. p 39). By extension, this pattern of exclusion is analogous to the results of the HUAC Trials: both organisational efforts perpetuate exclusion through the promise of purification. Through this analogy, Miller highlights how the United States continues to pass on a cycle of exclusion driven by its organised desire to avoid corruption.

Finally, through increasingly paranoid diction, Miller demonstrates how these cycles of exclusion are fostered. In his essay ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics,’ Richard Hofstadter notes the ‘absolutistic framework in which [paranoid] hostility [is] commonly expressed,’ and the ‘[accumulation of] evidence in order to protect [the paranoid’s] cherished convictions’2 . Miller demonstrates the first of these qualities in Reverend Hale’s diction throughout Acts 1 and 2. Continually asserting that ‘the Devil is a wily one,’ ‘the Devil is alive in Salem,’ and ‘the Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone,’ Hale frames the Devil as a ‘clearly delineated’2 and absolute evil, necessitating hostile exclusion through the fortress of theology which he embodies as a Reverend (The Crucible, 2. pp 53, 59; 1. p 31). In Act 3, Miller amplifies this paranoia through the diction of Deputy-Governor Danforth, who, after arresting people attesting to the virtue of persecuted witches, states that ‘a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it [...]. This is a sharp time, now [...] – we live no longer in the dusky afternoon where evil mixed itself with good’ (The Crucible, 3. p 76). Danforth’s diction applies the paranoid’s absolutistic framework to the court’s acceptance of evidence, justifying the exclusion of dissenting voices. He proceeds to state that, to defend the accused, one ‘calls up witnesses to prove his innocence. But witchcraft is ipso facto, [...] is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? The witch and the victim. None other.’ (The Crucible, 3. p 80). Here, Danforth’s diction ‘is nothing if not coherent’3 – alongside rhetorical argument, the incorporation of Latin forms a scholarly barrier that acts as ‘a means of warding off [...] profane intrusion’4 by excluding contradictory evidence and dissenting opinion. Miller’s increasingly paranoid diction thus portrays how absolutistic views of evil become a means of justifying exclusion on an organisational level, in order to preserve the integrity of those organisations.

Throughout The Crucible, Miller thus paints a picture of paranoia and exclusion in Salem, which, rather than remaining an isolated moment in history, has become an inherited belief of American identity. The initial formation of the American organisation is oppositional to a constant threat of contamination; however, this attempt to exclude evil creates a society driven by growing fear of that contamination. As paranoia grows, so do exclusionary efforts, each paradoxically conflating the other to a point of tragedy. In exposing this tragedy in Salem, Miller’s The Crucible brings to light how this cycle of paranoia and exclusion lies at the heart of American Identity.