Why did Arthur Miller write The Crucible?

wrote his
second play, , as a response to his distaste of McCarthyism during the 1950s. Miller believed
that people were getting worked up and blaming others without any real reason or evidence. He
wanted to show how irrational the large fear of Communism was and demonstrate that people were
getting to the point where it becomes violent and destructive. He wrote the play as a means to
set up a mirror in which the public could see that what the Puritans did in the 1600s, pointed
fingers without evidence, let their long-standing feuds be a basis for false
accusations, let boredom, ignorance, jealousy, and money become sufficient for sentencing and
murdering, was being repeated in the modern day with accusations of Communism.

Miller was accused of being a Communist but never actually joined the Communist
party.