Examples Of Evil In The Crucible

People’s thoughts, when expressed as words, have lots of power. When many people have the same or similar thoughts; those thoughts can lead to large numbers of people making very poor decisions and can affect the lives of many people. In the play The Crucible and during the era of McCarthyism in the 1950’s; thoughts of a few became the thoughts of many and led to some people being treated unfairly and punished for no reason. In the The Crucible, Abigail Williams began accusing other people of witchcraft. (Miller, background) Abigail was dancing in the forest, which was prohibited, and then was caught. When her uncle found out she was in the forest, she tried to blame other people and the first person she accused was Tituba. (Miller, pg. 143) Abigail decided in her mind that blaming others and spreading lies about them would make her free to continue to do as she wished. Abigail spread lies about Tituba that caused many other people to believe Tituba was guilty. The judges decided to torture Tituba to the point that she publically admitted to a crime she never committed and then she

This is something that cannot be unproven once people believe it about you. There is no way to prove that what people say, you think isn't what you think because thoughts live inside of our heads. Once someone is able to convince others that you think somethingis true, like communism, it is nearly impossible to prove to them that you don’t think it. In the McCarthy era people were put through trials where they were accused of being communists even though the accusers were basing their accusation on nothing more than what they thought. Those on trial were in an area where they were unable to prove the accuser wrong and many times were blacklisted, meaning people lost their job and went unemployed. This made these people “guilty” if they actually admitted guilt or were actually found guilty of any