How is mccarthyism related to the crucible

The McCarthy hearings and the Salem witch trials accurately represent the saying, "Desperate times call for desperate measures. In the 17th century, the Salem witch trials charged innocent villagers of practicing witchcraft. Victims from the McCarthy hearings were isolated and ruined, while victims from the Salem trials were hanged and shunned.

They decided that if you were suggested of being a communist you would have to face trial. This committee had the power to blacklist you and destroy your career.

Both situations spiraled out of control because of ignorance and the use mob mentality. A person who sympathized with Communists was persecuted, just as if someone tried to defend the accused witches of Salem. Like Salem, if the accused confessed to communism, they would be blacklisted from their community, but not jailed. Sir William Phips was the Governor of Massachusetts at the time of the salem Witch Trials, and he refused to stop the trials until one of the accusers targeted his wife.

If you are being threatened of life or death with false statements would you take the blame or would you blame others? The crucible is an allegory because they believe that people are symbolic for the devil and witch craft. However the crucible also relates to the red scarce because people are being accused and it just leads to people being afraid and deaths.

The crucible connects to real life by persecuting a lot of innocent people just like the red scarce. The red scarce is a witch hunt with suspected communist supporters. McCarthy was a Senator who made a list of people he claimed to be known communists working for the State Department.

The state believed McCarthy and the people got treated badly because they were wrongly accused of. Although both situations include different causes, their effects are strikingly similar. For instance, throughout The Crucible, Abigail Williams is being shown repeatedly accusing innocent people of witchcraft. Her actions begin sending the small town into a panic as they throw people into jail and hang them in an effort to try and cleanse the town from any aspect of evil.

Similarly, throughout , Joseph McCarthy falsely accused people within the United States Government of being a member of the Communist party. Both scenarios spiraled out of control due to people who became paranoid that most of the government were made up of communists and it would destroy the United States of America. Also, with …show more content… Also, since The Crucible was written to be parallel to McCarthyism, the same idea is shown. The same situation can be seen in The Crucible as Arthur Miller was influenced by the events that occurred during McCarthyism.

In the Crucible, anyone whose name that had been mentioned underwent an investigation and was asked to prove that they were not partaking in witchcraft. Because this task was impossible, the court made rash decisions such as sending people to jail or sentencing them to be hanged. Apparently, certain processes are universal.

The Crucible has resonated across time because it expresses central truths about human nature. People will go to great lengths to avoid being ostracized by society, including, in many cases, betraying their true beliefs and selling out their friends.

If patriotism is taken too far, it can transform itself into a hatred of "outsiders" rather than a love of political freedoms. This type of harmful attitude remains an issue in the US to this day. Miller closes his essay by saying, "I am not sure what The Crucible is telling people now, but I know that its paranoid center is still pumping out the same darkly attractive warning that it did in the fifties.

The fear of witches only seems archaic because most of society no longer holds serious beliefs in the supernatural. Today, scenarios like this can be even more insidious because "witch hunts" are conducted for types of people that really do exist. There were, of course, communists in the US in the s, but the vast majority of them had no designs on overthrowing the US government or becoming Soviet spies.

The danger lies in assuming that purely because someone holds a political or religious belief, he or she must pose a threat. People who are viewed as "other" continue to be persecuted out of fear and ignorance. The Crucible and McCarthyism can be compared to other modern forms of rumor, persecution, suspicion, and hysteria such as:. Now that you've read the article, you can try your hand at answering some of these discussion questions. I've included a few different types of questions on this topic that you might encounter in your English class:.

Check out our full book summary of The Crucible so you can see for yourself how the play fits into its historical context. Need some quotes to fill out your essay for English class? Read this article for a list of all the most important quotes in the play , categorized by theme.

To fully understand the messages of The Crucible , you need to get to know the main characters. Interested in what witchcraft and magic in America looked like in the years leading up to the publication of The Crucible? Learn who Aleister Crowley was and what influence he had on counter-culture with this article. We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score.

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Score on SAT Math. Score on SAT Reading. Score on SAT Writing. What ACT target score should you be aiming for? How to Get a Perfect 4. S Senator, took advantage of the mounting fear and started accusing government officials with the act of Subversion — the act or an instance of overthrowing a legally constituted government.

This led to the ever-accumulating threat of communism and the fear it held over people. Parris can, to some extent, be a representation of Joseph McCarthy. Like Rev. Parris and Judge Danforth, McCarthy accused potential deviants, prompted by rumours rather than logical evidence. In Salem, the judges coerced witnesses into implicating others, similar to the technique used in the s. The other major theme in prevalent in The Crucible is Personal Integrity. Many of the accused were hung because they chose their personal integrity and their reputation over their lives and would not be able to live knowing they traded their morals for their faith in God.

The Court believed this was a declaration of being guilty and many were hung on this basis. A real stand-out character that shows immense amounts of personal integrity is the character of John Proctor. Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang!

How may I live without my name? More importantly, it illustrates his obsession with his good name and Reputation, which is tremendously important in Salem, because public and private moralities are the same.

Now, however, he has come to a true understanding of what a good reputation means and what course of action it necessitates. This defense of his name enables him to muster the courage to die, heroically, with his goodness intact.

As with the Salem witch trials, suspected Communists were encouraged to confess and name other supporters during highly controversial investigations. Accusations were mainly directed at government officials and famous actors and artists.