REDBAITING AND GUILT.

REDBAITING AND GUILT. If Arthur Miller thought of THE CRUCIBLE as being primarily about false accusations against a man who feels himself guilty of other sins, are there implications for Miller’s views on the consequences of Redbaiting? I think Miller says so in TIMEBENDS. He describes the hardships that Redbaiting imposed on its victims—the economic hardships, the destruction of careers, the criminal penalties. But he emphasizes the emotional pain and guilt for the victims. He makes an explicit connection between the Salem witch trials and the Red-hunt: “What was manifestly parallel was the guilt, two centuries apart, of holding illicit, suppressed feelings of alienation and hostility toward standard, daylight society as defined by its most orthodox proponents. Without guilt the 1950s Red-hunt could never have generated such power…..Even [the former Communist’s} naivete in seeing Russia not as an earthly empire but rather as a kind of spiritual condition was now a source of guilt and shame.”