ess. in fact, to the playwright Arthur Miller, the McCarthy Hearings bore an alarming resemblance to the trials in Salem in 1692. The Crucible was his way of trying to keep history from repeating itself. One of the most popular TV shows in 1953 was "I Led Three Lives." It always began the same way: A man's face appears on the screen. His expression is taut with anxiety. The narrator says something like, "This is the fantastically true story of Herbert A. Philbrick, who for nine frightening years did lead three lives--average citizen, member of the Communist Party, and counterspy for the FBI. For obvious reasons, the names, dates and places have been changed, but the story is based on fact." The show was scary and exciting, but it always left you worried, because Philbrick's job never seemed to be done. Communist spies were everywhere, and one man could do only so much against so many. There was a lot of talk in those days about the "Red Menace." Red is the color of the Russian flag, and all Russians are Communists. So to say "Better dead than red" meant that you'd kill yourself before you let the Communists take over. The slogan was repeated over and over throughout America. My father said it; my teachers said it; I'm sure I said it myself, even though I was just five years old at the time. And in fact there were good reasons to be worried about the Russians. They had the atomic bomb, as we did. But a lot of people said they got the bomb by using spies, and that really made us worry. It was charged that secret agents, working under cover, had stolen our secrets and given them to the Enemy. Even worse, these spies supposedly were hardly ever Russians themselves, but often American citizens, as normal as you or me, the kind of people you see every day on the street and hardly even notice. Blacks are identifiable by their skin color, foreigners speak with an unusual accent. But a Communist could be anybody. It sort of makes a Communist sound like the bogey-man, doesn't it? Well, to many people in 1953, a Communist was just as scary as the bogey-man, and a lot more real. Soon after it was discovered that the Russians had the bomb, the U.S. Congress started investigations into so-called Un-American Activities, and one of the men they put in charge was Joseph R. McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin. McCarthy claimed America was in great danger from a Communist conspiracy to take over the world. And, as if he were a surgeon hacking away tumors in a body riddled with cancer, he tried to root out every trace of Communism he could find. It soon became clear that very few people were completely free of any connection with Communism. To find out why, we have to go back in time a little bit. Arthur Miller had just turned 14 when His family's savings were wiped out by the stock market crash of October, 1929. Almost literally overnight, the lives of many of his friends changed from reasonable comfort to poverty. Over the next 12 years--the time of the Great Depression, as it is called--Arthur Miller came to know and work with people who had joined the Communist Party. These people weren't spies, they simply were desperate, and they saw Communism as a way out of a desperate situation. And although Communism worried a few people in the 1930s, most were too busy with their own problems to give it much thought. Besides, Soviet Russia was not yet an enemy of the United States. In fact, Russian and American soldiers later fought side by side against the Germans at the end of World War II. It wasn't until after the war, when--as so often happens--the victor's turned against each other, that Communism began to be considered a very serious threat. By the late 1940s when the Congressional hearings first began, there were quite a few people who had flirted with Communism at some time or other, although most had renounced it long before. But even if you had no Communism in your own past, you could easily be in the same position as Arthur Miller--you knew

Some common words found in the essay are:
Arthur Miller, Abigail Williams, Darkness Light, Communist McCarthy, Russians Communists, , Arthur Miller's, Un-American Activities, Reverend Hale, Colony Puritans, arthur miller, abigail williams, john proctor, mary warren, salem 1692, called testify, un-american activities, communist party, rebecca nurse, god's visible kingdome, joe mccarthy,
Approximate Word count = 4285
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page double spaced)