Communism And Mass Hysteria In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Fear and the unknown can cause people to do things that they wouldn't normally do in the right mind. Also when people want all the power they'll do what it takes to get it. A play from 1953 called, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, showed how fear affects people's thoughts. It started with a group of girls dancing in the woods. They feared getting beaten or in trouble, so they began accusing other people in the town of Salem of witchcraft. Because of that, there were 20 people killed and over 200 accused. This kind of hysteria was also seen during McCarthyism or The Red Scare. The Red Scare caused a lot of people to not trust each other and several people to lose their jobs. Arthur Miller saw the similarities between the fear of communism and

Like in the Salem Witch Trials when over 200 people were jailed for supposedly practicing witchcraft and talking to the devil. It all started by a group of girls getting caught dancing in the woods. The girls didn’t want to get in trouble so they cried witch. The girls would appear in court and then start screaming or crying saying someone specific in the room was harming them. As it says in Aurther Miller’s play, The Crucible, “I saw Goody Jacobs with the devil!! I saw Goody Howe with the devil” and all the girls started to join in. Even though no one could physically see that person hurting the girls they still were charged. That's because of something we call spectral evidence. In May of 1693, the governor ended the witch trials for good when he pardoned all the remaining accused. With nineteen hanged and one pressed to death the Salem Witch Trials were finally

McCarthyims and The Salem Witch Trials were very complex events in history. From being falsely accused, fear of public humiliation, and public hysteria, these two events played a big role in the history of the United States. McCarthyism was fear of communism and the witch trials were fear of witchcraft. Another major factor in these eras was guilt by association, which means that if people they were close with or were around were found guilty then they would be the next to be looked into. Both of these eras showed that the government had so much power that hysteria broke out and spread like a disease. One difference between these two is that in the witch trials people actually lost their lives and were hanged, but in the McCarthyism Era people were just blacklisted and lost their jobs and the chance to get a