Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in the context of McCarthy-era rhetoric and anti-Communist propaganda in the United States. Although it has a literal and direct historical reference and application to the Salem witch trials, the work serves as an overarching metaphor for public persecution and the dangers that a police state poses to the general public. Through The Crucible, Miller criticizes American society and indirectly accuses patriarchy of dismantling some of the core norms and values ​​upon which the nation was built. Furthermore, Miller skillfully draws analogies between Salem's persecution of women during the witch hunts and Washington's persecution of all Americans during the Cold War. While women were the only real targets during the witch trials of the late 17th century, all Americans had fallen under indiscriminate policies of political discrimination. Miller therefore presents patriarchy within a Marxist as well as a postmodernist framework. As a Marxist, Miller draws attention to the owners of the means of production of power. As a postmodernist, Miller shows how institutional coercion and conformity to social norms create a tangle of ideals and a conflagration of the ethics on which nations are founded. Fear tactics become one of the fundamental means by which the owners of the means of power production maintain their power. The use of force – psychological, social and physical – is an integral part of the patriarchal model. Integral to the postmodernist model is the panoptic power of surveillance and mind control. In all of this, fear tactics provide the central means by which individuals are forced to conform to a dominant ideology. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One of the scare tactics Miller employs in The Crucible is directed at female power and female sexuality in particular. The central motif of the play is that of women dancing naked in the woods, which instigates moral anger among the self-described and hypocritical Christian community. Not only is the community outraged that three young women danced together naked in the woods, but one of those women appears to be a woman of color. Miller then shows how the intersection of race, class, gender, and power is the exact point where fear tactics are created and maintained. The patriarchal establishment demonizes female sexuality, using fear tactics to enforce social conformity. One of the ways the patriarchal establishment demonizes female sexuality is through the social institution of religion. The other way the patriarchal establishment demonizes female sexuality is through the institution of law. Both of these institutions, the institution of law and that of religion, are perpetuated by people in positions of power, without any democratization of their policies, procedures, or philosophies. Even when the United States formalized into a modern democratic nation, as it did when Miller wrote The Crucible, patriarchal processes and procedures dictated issues such as the interpretation of the law. This is why Jim Crow was able to ferment in the generations after the abolition of slavery, and why women were prohibited from voting hundreds of years after the real Salem witch trials. Fear tactics directed specifically at homosexuality are implicit in the scorn aimed at Tituba. Scare tactics against homosexuality are related to being non-white and therefore both sexually andsocially deviant. As a woman of color, Tituba represents deviance in all its dimensions. Her name symbolizes female sexuality, as Tituba connotes "tits". Furthermore, Tituba is sexually deviant because she is perceived as having exotic powers directly related to her African ancestry. She is portrayed as some sort of demonic jungle creature who "squeals" and speaks "nonsense... sways like a stupid beast."Tituba also has superhuman communication powers, including telepathy. For example, Tituba is described as "very afraid because her slave-sense has warned her that, as always, the troubles in this house will ultimately fall on her shoulders." Here, Miller lets his audience know that Tituba's status as an underclass means that she will be a scapegoat for any problems. The fact that she is black means that a problem such as a sick child will "sooner or later fall on her back." Unless the playwright is being deliberately ironic, which is possible given his postmodern setting, Miller belies his own prejudices in assuming that Tituba possesses a "slave sense." That sense of enslavement embodies the deviance inherent in black female power. The fact that the three girls were naked and "running through the trees" focuses on their physicality, their sexuality, and their innate pagan connection to nature that subverts Christian ethics. Another fear tactic explicitly explained in The Crucible is directed at the power of the lumpenproletariat to subvert the power of authority. Women are the underclass in American Puritan culture, just as the artists targeted during the Cold War “Red Scare” were depicted as an underclass without access to the avenues of power that launched McCarthy's career. As Miller himself stated, “Red hunting was becoming the dominant fixation of the American psyche” (Miller 1). Yet, unconsciously or not, Miller ends up playing with the same patriarchal norms that he attempts to criticize in The Crucible. As Schissel points out, The Crucible is "a disturbing work, not only because of the obvious moral dilemma that is irresolutely resolved by the death of John Proctor, but also because of the treatment that Abigail and Elizabeth receive from Miller." It is as if Miller wanted to use the work as a fear tactic to scare readers into supporting tyrannical, fascist, sexist, and racist politicians and policies. Yet Miller unintentionally "reinforces stereotypes of femme fatales and cold, ruthless wives in order to assert seemingly universal virtues" (Schissel 461). Unfortunately, The Crucible becomes a "morality play", as Schissel describes it, and "based on a questionable androcentric morality". Miller maintains the patriarchal social order in which women, blacks, and people without access to the means of production are the underclass, leaving the established social order firmly in place despite the fierce criticism of it. Miller demonstrates that it is impossible to alter the interior of the same patriarchal zeitgeist contemporary with both the Puritan society Miller writes about and the Cold War society Miller writes in. The fear tactics used by people in positions of power in The Crucible are ones that Miller himself employs. Reverend Hale, for example, plays the symbolic role of the tyrant, who boils the women in the play as if they were pieces of cauliflower wrapped in a dumpling and set to boil in a cauldron over high heat. Adler agrees: "Miller has, ironically, aligned himself with the very forces that The Crucible condemns," that is, forces that use fear tactics against women and other underclass members of society. The men in positions of authority in The Crucible, including Parris, Putnam, and Proctor, "exercise their power with'.