It's a play about the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s and an allegory for the Red Scare of the Cold War, but for some reason the message the play The Crucible conveys still resonates with audiences in the 21st century. Why?
Likely because for all the progress humans have made in becoming more accepting (or tolerant) of differences, the idea of the "other" is one that has transcended throughout all of human civilization. The specifics of who The Other are have changed over time, save for one: they are disliked by those in power. Going through human history from any corner of the planet it is awfully clear that humans have never given a break to the act of hating; we simply cycle out the hated group every once in a while.
During the ancient civilizations- The Maya, The Aztecs, The multiple dynasties in China, the Mongols, the Romans- The Other were any and every outside nation. Because saying the people of other civilizations were cut from a different cloth made it seem as if the chances of them getting along with yours were slim.
If you don't like them, strip away any ideas that you may be similar to them. This was seen during The Salem Witch Trials described in The Crucible when the accused were turned into devil-sympathizes. It was seen during slavery in America when a slave was nothing more than an object. It was seen during the Holocaust in the 1940s when anyone from the Jewish to the Gypsies to the LGBTQ to the mentally disabled were advertised as a taint on society with the only given rhyme or reason being those in power said so. It carried on through apartheid in South Africa, segregation in America, the Red Scare during the Cold War, and it carries on today in the form of all those -obias and -isms: sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia. The Crucible still resonates with audiences because the witch hunt that is present in the play still carries- in many grotesque forms- on to this day.
