McCarthyism and The Crucible contain many similarities and differences in their persecution and accusation of people who are identified as criminals of their societies. McCarthyism and The Crucible contain many similarities and differences in their persecution and accusation of people who are identified as criminals of their societies. Both events in history contain extremely similar circumstances, including the accusation of one person leading to a mass hysteria enveloping a society to be overly suspicious of their fellow people. The two events also contain many differences, including time, society structure, and the magnitude of the event. McCarthyism is named for Joseph McCarthy, a Wisconsin senator in the 1950s that started a hysterical movement to expose the communists in the United States. Now, it is seen that McCarthy focused on Democrats in general with baseless and sweeping allegations of communist involvement, giving way for the Republicans to take over Congress and the Presidency. In comparison, Abigail Williams, a common girl in Salem Village in the 1600s, started a hysterical movement to expose the witches in Salem village. Unknowingly to the people in Salem at the time, Abigail's witch hunt was nothing more than to regain her affair with John Proctor, get rid of his wife, Elizabeth, and rid any talk of her dancing in the woods naked. One cannot help to see the uncanny similarity in the two historical events that occurred over four hundred years apart. McCarthyism and The Crucible contain other similarities as well, such as the complete breakdown of the justice system. In both instances, people that are accused are immediately seen as a communist or a witch, without a trial or any other ... ... middle of paper ... ...ople. The hysteria developed from the overreaction of the fear of the communist threat, and was soon taken out of proportion similar to the Salem trials. Another contrast, the events in Salem were local events, limiting the amount of people involved and affected by the hysteria. The communist threat affected an entire nation, which means more mass hysteria and more people to have their emotions take over their good judgment. The Salem witchcraft trials represented a perfect example of the extreme measures people will do when they are thinking using their emotions and not their good judgment. Even with this example, the exact same thing happened during the fifties, and people could not even recognize that they were the girls in Salem prosecuting the innocents and convicting them under false charges. It's amazing how much people cannot learn from history.
Death is a major theme through both Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. In the first text, mass hysteria rips through Salem after a group of girls danced in the woods and blame everything and anything on witchcraft. The girl who could be identified as the main trouble-maker is Abigail Williams. She kicked up all of the witch suspicions because she had an affair with John Proctor, the identifiable hero. The story climaxed with the death of characters that drew affection from the readers. In the second piece of literature, the main conflict happens to be that of Hester Prynne, who committed adultery and had a child. There was a lot of public ridicule in this instance and many underlying plots within it. Again, the climax of the story could be argued to be the death of a beloved character. These two particular titles do in fact share a lot of common ideas and themes, while at the same having very
At that time in American history, paranoia spread around the concept of communism and its potential threats. People began to wrongfully accuse others of being communist or supporting communism, similar to how the characters in the play wrongfully accused people of being witches. Just as those accused of being witches were asked to name whom else they knew of to be witches, those accused of communism were asked to do the same. With this system came the spread of uneasiness throughout the country of America and the town of Salem. Miller wished to showcase the crazy nature of McCarthyism in a way that people would be able to comprehend. The hysteria in both cases was caused simply by fear and not by actual
In 1860-1960 there was lynching in the United States. When the confederates (south) lost the civil war the slaves got freedom and got rights of human beings. This was just to say because segregation wasn 't over in the South and didn 't go away for over 100 years. Any black person in the South accused but not convicted of any crime of looking at a white woman, whistling at a white woman, touching a white woman, talking back to a white person, refusing to step into the gutter when a white person passed on the sidewalk, or in some way upsetting the local people was liable to be dragged from their house or jail cell by lots of people crowds, mutilated in a terrible
Arthur Miller's portrayal of Salem, Massachusetts can be juxtaposed with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. While the motivations differ, societal similarities exist and both teach us that when a whole society of people have a fear so great that it can be used against them, the society will try to do anything and everything in their power to prevent this from happening. Even when the means of prevention involves innocent people dieing and the judiciary system becoming corrupt, the society will act upon this fear of wickedness and the devil.
The mass hysteria between today’s society and the Salem witch hunt can be compared through Freedom , Religion ,and the killing of innocent victims. Mass hysteria has caused a lot of destruction in society throughout the years. It has brought about a lot of chaos in both Salem as well as the present society. Mass hysteria has brought out a lot of fear in people in both Salem and present society.
During the 1690’s in Salem, Massachusetts, one of the most disgraceful events in American history took place. 20 innocent people were sentenced to death on charges of witchcraft (Kortuem). At the time there was a witch scare sweeping across the North East of America in a time we know today as the Salem Witch Trials. The witch trials was one of the most shameful events in American history. In fact, it was compared to another event by a man named Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller was a playwright from New York who wrote many famous plays like Death of a Salesman, All my Sons, and of course The Crucible (Kortuem). In The Crucible, Miller was comparing the McCarthy Hearings at the time to the events hundreds of years earlier in the
The play “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller was written in response to McCarthyism in the 1950’s. In 1692 and 1693 the Salem witch trials took place in Salem Massachusetts. Girls believed to be involved in witchcraft were responsible for these trials. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s senator McCarthy came to office. Senator McCarthy and some of his allies were responsible for hysteria in the United States of America in the 1950’s. The scare was also in result of a communist scare after World War II and leading to the cold war. The behavior of the people of the Salem witch trials and Americans in the 19050’s resulted in a big scare in reaction to hysteria.
Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, and The West Memphis Three, are all about people believing what others say out of fear of the unknown we know this because of historical examples, modern examples, and factors that contributed. McCarthyism, the Salem Witch trials and the west memphis three all had a fear of the unknown, and accused the people who were not like others because they were out of the ordinary. The West Memphis Three and the Salem Witch trials had more of a satanic panic, and were based in a very religious towns. McCarthyism was all over the US and was about fear of communism and spies. The salem witch trials occurred in the 1600's in the very religious town of salem. After a night of dancing in the woods a group of girls were bewitched,
It is common knowledge that Author Miller wrote The Crucible as a reaction to a tragic time in our countries history. The McCarthy hearings, as they came to be known, which dominated our country from 1950 to 1954, where hearings in which many, suspected of being related to communism, where interviewed and forced to give up names of others, or they where imprisoned, and their names were black listed. There are several parallels between the McCarthy Era, and the time of the Salem which trials. One similarity one will see is what I call the scare factor. Another parallel between the two groups is the "everybody is doing it" mentality. One also sees a parallel in the lives that were ruined in both eras because of the accusations and punishments.
One of the most obvious similarities between the two time periods is McCarthy’s counterpart Abigail Williams, the infamous antagonist from The Crucible. In February 1950, McCarthy stated to the public that he held “A list of 205 that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless, are still working and shaping policy in the State Department” (Wikiquote 1). McCarthy’s main goal by announcing there were communist working in the American government was to make a better name for himself so he could be re-elected, and much how Abigail encouraged witchcraft in Salem. “I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!”(Miller 1262). Abigail quickly and falsely accused others to avoid punishment and to be with John Proctor. Abigail accused these innocent women of witchcraft with no evidence, even though she was the one practicing witchcraft. “You drank blood Abby… You drank a charm to k...
The attacks turned into terrifying states where “people themselves began to revel in the fear which was being used to rule their minds” (Levanture 1). Both McCarthy and the girls in the play use methods that would appeal to others’ emotion rather than their reason. Puritan Salem within the play had a high fear for any particular type of interference with the Devil, so when the girls bring the idea, the town citizens attempt to do anything possible to free the town of any witchcraft including sentencing people to their death and hanging them. This is shown whenever “Abigail brings the other girls into the court, and when she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel...and if they scream and howl...the person’s clapped in the jail for bewitching them” (Miller 53). This shows how the citizens of Salem believe anything whenever there is a chance of fraud. Within The Crucible, people believe “anyone who does not display proper behavior must be cavorting with the devil and deserves to be punished” (“Arthur” 1). This is the case whenever Elizabeth and Proctor are attacked for not attending church regularly. Along with this, people also are gullible to believe confessions people make. If they are to confess, they will not die so many confess in order to survive whenever they do not actually practice witchcraft. Targets in both McCarthyism and the Salem witch cases show “the innocents’ sense of helplessness against a town gone mad [which] suggests the inevitable snowball effect of hysterical behavior” (2). Senator McCarthy chose a strategic time in revealing the scare of communists within the United States by doing it after World War II when citizens were afraid of Communist Russia. He had the “ability to play on the nation’s fears (3) and this brought him more believers. Citizens easily believed accusations against
Not everything is as simple as that though. There were no actual witches in Salem, but there were pro-Communists during the Red Scare. However, they both falsely accused many innocent people.
The McCarthy era is very similar to the Salem Witch trials. They are both similar, because they both dealt with hysteria. Hysteria is an uncontrollable fear or outburst of emotion. Both things had to do with people accusing each other of people being communist, and people being witches.
Another comparison between The Crucible and McCarthyism is that in both people were guilty of believe. In The Crucible, people who believed or practice witchcraft were executed and in McCarthyism the ones who believed or participate in Communism were guilty of belief.
Events have played out in history that made people realize the inhumane acts of people and the Salem witch trials and the McCarthy era were two of them. The Salem witch trials in 1692 were almost 260 years before the McCarthy “witch hunts” in the 1950s yet there are similarities between them. The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller in 1953, is about the Salem witch trials and is an allegory to the practicing of McCarthyism during the Second Red Scare in the United States, which Miller was a victim of. Although there may be differences between “The Crucible” and McCarthyism, ultimately the anger, lack of evidence, and the people were alike in both events.