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Examples Of Mass Hysteria In The Crucible

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The Crucible, written by playwright Arthur Miller, is an accurate representation of the Communist Red Scare. The play is a metaphor for McCarthyism; the act of falsely accusing without any evidence. It is written based on the Salem Witch Trials, a time during the 1600s when men and women all over Salem, Massachusetts, were being wrongly prosecuted for practicing witchcraft. In both history and the play, many innocent people were proceeded against for a crime they didn’t commit, being communist. Even though the fear of being accused of communism was widely known, and not one person would dare to commit such a crime, many guiltless individuals were charged anyway. U.S. senator, Joseph R. McCarthy, a man who had great influence, had begun accusing people for being communists. Arthur Miller reflects all that had occurred during the Red Scare through his play, The Crucible, by making innocent people accused of witchcraft, demonstrating the great hysteria that the devil had created, and writing about antagonists who had no proof of real witchcraft practices. Overall, these characteristics …show more content…

After this went public, people lived in fear every day; not being sure whom to trust. This made it easy for them to accuse each other which resulted in the ruin of many careers. In everybody’s mind everyone around them was a potential communist spy. This is similar to The Crucible, in which everybody started fearing that the devil was among them when Betty fell ill with no obvious reason. The citizens of Salem automatically assumed she had been touched by the devil, (Miller, 10) when she was actually trying to cheat her way out of getting in trouble for dancing naked in the woods. The entire thing had spiraled out of control and continued to as people who had known each other for years begun to accuse each other of

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