It is often said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Some people believe that it is simply the elders being too cautious and laugh it off while others take the message seriously. I am part of the latter group. I believe that history is a story we can learn much from and that its lessons apply both to every day life and monumental decisions. History also supports my theory with three stellar examples : Hitler 's crushing defeat in Russia, McCarthyism in the 1950 's, and Tzar Nicholas II 's downfall. 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 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 of his national audience as he condemned communists and rounded up those he suspected of being communists or gay, mainly famous people, liberals or those working in government positions. 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. Louis and Nicholas both has the misfortune of beginning their reign in the wake of predecessors who left their nations in a less than ideal state and with high tensions. When their respective leaders ascended the throne, France and Russia were powder kegs waiting to explode. France had large debts from Louis XV 's failed wars, irresponsible spending, and unfair taxes. Also, the monarchy itself was weakened and more vulnerable to corruption. To top it all off, the peasants were growing restless under the burden of financing the French empire while Louis XV allowed the country to decline into shambles due to both ignoring domestic matters and allowing his favorite mistress, the Madame de Pompadour, to hold too much political influence. Poor Nicholas did not fare any better. Russia was also heavily in debt from several wars, namely the Franco-Prussian War. As in France, taxes were unfair and around 90% of the population was in crushing poverty. Russia itself was still in varying stages of modernization and still severely lagging behind the rest of Europe. To make matters worse, both rulers were completely unprepared to rule their respective nations. Louis XVI was only 19 when he ascended the throne after his grandfather 's death. His educators did him no favors in preparing him for ruling over France, either. They encouraged him to be timid and indecisive. These traits played a large part in
In the following paragraphs I am going to show how Hollywood portrays the Salem Witch Trails and the 1690’s compared with what actual happened in history and that in the film "The Crucible".
The play described Betty as a young girl, nine years of age, who began showing symptoms around the same time as her cousin Abigail Williams. Betty accused many people, and testified against them in multiple court cases. From the evidence that the Witch Trials shows, Betty was most likely pretending to be possessed in order to gain attention, or rebel from the strict lifestyle the Puritans followed. “She could not concentrate at prayer time and barked like a dog when her father would rebuke her. She screamed wildly when she heard the ‘Our Father’ prayer and once hurled a Bible across the room” (Walsh).
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.
Inspired by the Red Scare, which was fuled by use of the either-or ( black and white) fallacy of thinking, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible depicts the village of Salem undergoing its own period of black and white thinking along with the suspicion and hysteria which followed. Miller exploits the literary element of setting to support the portrayal of the effects of black and white thinking in Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
He was a Senator from Wisconsin who organized a campaign to search for and dig out any communists that were living in the US. McCarthy didn 't use fair and just techniques to find the alleged communists but rather used stereotypes, overgeneralization, and name calling to root them out (Westlund). When someone was accused of being a communist, they were asked to confess and say the names of other people they knew who were communists, so it essentially turned into a blame game which was very similar to the way it was in the Salem Witch Trials. In The Crucible, the character Abigail Williams represents Joseph McCarthy. Abigail Williams was a real person involved in the Salem Witch Hunt but her character in the play was altered a small bit for dramatic effect. In The Crucible, Abigail begins the witch hunt by making false accusations of witchcraft on innocent people. She uses lies and deception to blame others and to put herself up (Miller). People believe her accusations just like McCarthy’s because there was fear in the people and it caused them to be more willing to believe the accusations. They both had power at the time and no one really stood up against them because everyone was scared and they believed their claims (Westlund). Comparing Abigail Williams to Joseph McCarthy was just one of the comparisons that Arthur Miller made in his play 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.
The Salem Witch trial and the Holocaust were very similar event because the people in both of these event were oppressed and were treated under harsh conditions, but the people that were affected by the Salem Witch trials were in better conditions than the people living during the Holocaust and the concentration camps. During the Salem Witch trials, the people involved it were given proper living conditions, while in the Holocaust, they were unbearable for most people.
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.
Besides similarities between “The Crucible”, Salem witch Trials, and the McCarthy Era there are differences. The Crucible/ Salem witch trials had people being hung that were believed to be witches compared to people just being put in prison when they were accused of being a communist in the McCarthy era. Also, anyone was able to charge someone else in “The Crucible” where during the McCarthy Era Joseph McCarthy was the one charging people, and no one else had any say about who was charged.
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.
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.
The purpose of my paper is to compare and contrast Arthur Miller’s The Crucible with the actual witch trials that took place in Salem in the 17th Century. Although many of the characters and events in the play were non-fictional, many details were changed by the playwright to add intrigue to the story. While there isn’t one specific cause or event that led to the Salem witch trials, it was a combination of events and factors that contributed to the birth and growth of the trials. Some of these events included: a small pox outbreak that was happening at the time, the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter by Charles II, and the constant fear of Native attacks. These helped in creating anxiety among the early Puritans that they were being punished by God himself.
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.