Perhaps the most famous example of history repeating itself is Hitler 's disastrous campaign in Russia. This event closely mirrored Napoleon 's failure on the same Eastern front in many ways. The most obvious is the fact that the Russians used almost the exact same tactics to win both times. They allowed their enemies to march forward into their homeland almost effortlessly, but while they were retreating they also burned and destroyed anything that could be used by their opposition. By the time Napoleon, and later Hitler, realized this, it was too late as the Russian winter had already set in. This led to both Hitler and Napoleon facing devastating losses as their both their armies were carrying mainly light supplies and thus were not prepared …show more content…
Even other nations spoke fondly of them until they began to covet the land of their neighboring countries – Hitler even won Time 's person of the year award twice. However, their popularity did not make them invincible and both men eventually succumbed to their enemies largely in part to Russia 's famous General Winter. Another common comparison in American is McCarthyism was extremely similar to the Salem Witch Trials. This is largely because of the play written by Arthur Miller, “The Crucible”. Despite the origins of the comparison, it still holds true. Both events were started by people who were extremely well respected by their peers accusing others of a hard-to-prove crime. Abigail Williams led the crusade against witches in the Salem Witch Trials while republican senator Joseph McCarthy preached the evils of communism and homosexuality. Even though the events occurred centuries apart, the mass-hysteria and fear aroused in the general populace was equally frightening in both events. Abigail thoroughly had the small town of Salem wrapped around her finger as she and her friends accused those they did not like, mainly women, of being witches and afflicting horrible spells upon them. McCarthy also had the support …show more content…
During the peak of their reigns of terror, they even had their peers accusing each other. This led to at least 19 deaths in the case of the Salem Witch Trials and thousands of ruined reputations, lost jobs and unwarranted jail time for McCarthy 's Red Scare. Abigail and McCarthy started their respective hunts as self-serving endeavors in order to further their own ambitions and selfish desires. Abigail was a poor, orphaned 11 year old girl who craved attention and desperately wanted to raise her status in society. McCarthy desired to make an illustrious political career
Many people in this world are accused of crimes so absurd that when put to trial, they name others of the same crime to redirect the focus from them to others like it happens in the actual day, every year, with minor cases. McCarthyism was one of those cases that changed history, likewise the Salem Witch Trials. McCarthyism had the same effect on people, people who were accused of communism blame others to lessen their penalty like in the Salem Witch Trials, so how the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Era can connects although the great difference in time?
When in doubt of an idea that presents itself, you either have to pursue the superior opinion or compose it for yourself. You’re sitting in a court, bewildered at the fact that an innocent or guilty individual is accused of a substance so erroneous. The residual of the audience believes these unwarranted accusations, but they have no understanding of the material that is being forenamed. The only option left is to neglect your subjacent opinion and follow the superiority or seem like someone at fault . This is what occurred during both the Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare which undoubtedly displayed hysteria of that clear-cut populace. Both these events sparked dread, repression, and hysteria throughout history and significantly affected their participators in these two completely contrasting time zones.
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
Cotton Mather, in his The Wonders of the Invisible World, preserved for posterity a very dark period in Puritanical American society through his account of the Salem witch trials in 1692. His description is immediately recognizable as being of the same viewpoint as those who were swept up in the hysteria of the moment. Mather viewed Salem as a battleground between the devil and the Puritans. "The New Englanders are a people of God settled in those which were once the devil's territories. . . . The devil thus irritated, immediately tried all sorts of methods to overturn this poor plantation" (Mather 421). Here Mather is alluding to the Native Americans as being a people associated with the devil rather than with their God, a common point of view held towards all savage people. Mather saw the witches of Salem as being "his [the devil's] incarnate legions" sent to Salem "to persecute us. . ." (Mather 421). The Salem witch trials have become a part of American mythology which has been passed down to each succeeding generation for over 300 years after the village of Salem sent its last witch to the gallows. However, it is the witch trials relevance to modern society more than any other factor that has contributed to its legendary place in American history and mythology. The witch trials that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, are the precursor to the modern trials where adults are accused of crimes including ritualistic sexual molestation of children. These types of ritualized abuse are commonly linked to Satanic cults. Modern beliefs in Satanists mirror similar beliefs held of colonial witches.
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
The Salem witch trials and the story of Joseph McCarthy are very similar; they both accused innocent people of doing things that were “bad” at the time. The Salem Witch trials were persecutions of men and woman on account of performing witchcraft. Two girls accused a woman of doing witchcraft and then the accusations continued, people accused other people to relieve their own punishment in a last ditch effort to save their lives, but it was in vein. After the witch trials were over “19 had been killed and an elderly man pressed to death under heavy stones”(Linder). “Some accused of witch craft were burned at the stake all in the name of justice”(Brown). Others were finally let out of jail after being in imprisonment for months at a time. Joseph McCarthy was the U.S senator for the state of Wyoming from 1947-1957, the year that he died. McCarthy became the most visible face in public during the time of the cold war in America. “McCarthy pursued unnecessary investigations, imprisonments and unprovoked acts to those who were being accused of being a communist”(Glitterrich). The term McC...
Salem Witch Craft In 1962 the penalty for witchcraft was to be hung or smashed. There was a big outburst of witchcraft and spells that were going around among the people of Massachusetts in 1962. Some of the women of Salem began the witchcraft, many people started to catch on and follow them. A lot of these people were hung up to what the Bible said about the wrongs of witchcraft.
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 Crucible is paralleled directly to the Salem Witch Trials and indirectly to the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s. The story of The Crucible takes place against the background of the Salem Witch, trials but the themes lie much deeper. The main themes expressed in The Crucible relate to the events that occurred at both the Salem Witch Trials and during the McCarthy era. At the Salem Witch Trials, one hundred fifty people were accused of practicing witchcraft and nineteen of those were convicted and executed. The evidence against these people was hardly substantial. At the McCarthy hearings, thousands of people were “blacklisted.” Anyone who tried to oppose the accusations was also viewed as a Communist. No one was convicted due to the more advanced legal system; still, that did not erase the fear that was instilled by the allegations.
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.
“Over 150 men and women were imprisoned because they were accused of witchcraft”(“Salem Witch Trials Facts, Worksheets & Information For Kids”). Katherine Howe had two relatives that were accused during the Salem Witch Trials. One was Elizabeth Proctor and the other was named Elizabeth Howe and she was killed. Katherine Howe attended Boston University and was working towards her doctorate when she was teaching a research seminar on witchcraft which inspired her to write her first novel(“Katherine Howe”). Because of her love and interest with witchcraft she eventually wrote Conversion, which has to do with the Salem Witch Trials.
Second, the Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare were compared because in both events, there were intolerant laws that targeted witchcraft and communism. The Bible claimed, “Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:31). This verse concludes it is a sin to practice witchcraft. The Puritan society based their government on religion, thus they were to follow this law and did not tolerate witchcraft. Furthermore, they took serious action on people suspected to be involved with the devil. There were also laws that were intolerant with Communism, such as the Smith Act of 1940 that declared, “Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction
Many people look back on the events of the Salem witch trials and laugh at the absurdity of the allegations. It seems crazy that society could be fooled into believing in things like witches and deal with the events in such an extreme manner. It is a common belief that witch hunts are things of the past. Many people would agree that they no longer exist today; however Arthur Miller, author of the play, "The Crucible", points out that society has not come very far from the days of the Salem witch trials. In his play, he used the Salem witch trials to represent the McCarthy Era because he saw that the nation was facing the same events that Salem went through back in the late 1600's. Arthur Miller wrote "The Crucible" in an attempt to create moral awareness for society. He did so by making a few small changes to the history and creating parallels in the play with racism, human tendencies, and H.U.A.C.
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.
Multiple killings of innocent, unarmed people seemed to spark the rise of social injustice of African Americans. Such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. The comparison of the Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism, social injustice against African Americans became greatly common in today's society. The unjust accusations of a specific group of people because of their race or beliefs influenced The Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, and the killings of African Americans. These accusations didn’t just lead to killings but an uproar in the African American community.