more. He is finally arguing for the freedom of expression of the individual, even when that expression appears to defy social stan dards and understanding.
Miller writes that "It was not only the rise of 'McCarthyism' that moved me, but something which seemed much more weird and mysterious. It was the fact that a political, objective, knowl edgeable campaign from the far Right was capable of creating not only a terror, but a new subjective reality, a veritable mys tique which was gradually assuming even a holy resonance" (Miller 161-162).
The Crucible, then, is about McCarthyism in the same way that Moby Dick is about whaling. Miller is writing about an external force which deliberately terrorizes a nation of apparently thinking individuals and does so in such a way that they do not even see the design behind the terror. Miller writes "That so interior and subjective an emotion could have been so manifestly created from without was a marvel to me. It underlies every word in The Crucible" (Miller 162).
The underlying historical root of McCarthyism was the Cold War, the hatred and fear of the Soviet Union and its atheistic, totalitarian and very mysterious Communism. There are clear par allels between Soviet Communism and the hatred and fear of evil as symbolized by the woods or the wi
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