In Arthur Miller’s play, ‘The Crucible’ and Andrew Niccol’s film, ‘Gattaca’ both authors use the narrative to explore the idea that the need to belong is a powerful motivator. In both texts the authors create societies to which belonging is critical to survival. Miller uses the town of Salem in 1694, the ‘New Jerusalem’ of its puritan inhabitants where the bible is law, contrastingly the events of Niccol’s Gattaca take place in a future two tiered society in which science has replaced religion. In both texts, Miller and Niccol use the characterisation of the central protagonist, to help signify how the worlds they have created use belonging as a motivator. Both authors also make use of dramatic irony to represent the power of the need to belong.…show more content… Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ allegorises McCarthyism in the American society of the 1950s by using 1694 Salem and its puritan inhabitants and Miller’s disapproval of Senate enquiries into communist activities through comparisons with witch trials. Where, Niccol, in ‘Gattaca’, extrapolates on on the science of genetic engineering and provides commentary on what our society may become. In both texts, those in power control their respective citizens through the use of ‘belonging’. The societies use fear of social isolation to control the population and use the promise of peace and harmony for those that conform. In ‘The Crucible’, the society of Salem incriminates those who do not steadfastly conform to the rules of the church, and believe that conformity will bring strength to the community, whereas the society of ‘Gattaca’ disapproves of anyone who does not have a faultless genetic identity, and incriminates those who do not conform to the laws of society. The genetically ‘perfect’ valids, the genetically engineered inhabitants who make up the upper class of the society, and the inferior genetically imperfect, natural born citizens who take up jobs as unskilled labourers or other menial tasks. Both societies use this social order to control the citizens that inhabit them, by criminalising dissent and through the use of fear and the promise of peace and harmony, those in power protect their own self
