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The Crucible Dbq Essay

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The Crucible, is a play written by Arthur Miller and it was first produced on Broadway in January of 1953. This play came out during the same time period of Joseph McCarthy and the hysteria of the Red Scare. The Crucible is mainly about the Salem Witch Trials and the hysteria of the people that were being hanged just because they were accused of being guilty of witchcraft. The Red Scare which is also known as McCarthyism was solely based on the claims of Senator Joseph McCarthy and how he believed that over 200 communists were working in the State Departments. McCarthyism is the political practice of making public accusations of betrayal without having any evidence to back it up. During this time period, Joseph McCarthy was just one of the …show more content…

During the Salem Witch trials, people could only be proven guilty through testimony of the witch's “victims” or through a confession from the Witch herself. This is because witchcraft is not assumed to be an “ordinary crime” and it is an “invisible crime" which means that there are no witnesses (Doc D). This led to a lot of innocent deaths because people would just lie to save themselves and also if they did not admit to participating in witchcraft they could also be killed so a lot of innocents died because they did not admit they were witches. In the play Abigail Williams and the girls accused half of the town for witchcraft without having any concrete evidence for it other than they saw them “with the devil”. During McCarthyism, people were also punished because if they were accused of being communists they were blacklisted and outcasted even though they said they did not do anything and were not associated with communism. There was no way to prove that they were not communist and so all they could do was take the punishment and also give out more suspect names. This basically shows how in The Crucible and in McCarthyism they showed a lack of proof and that people were blamed solely on accusation which is not reliable. Also because of this, people ended up …show more content…

It shows mass fear and hysteria in The Crucible from the townspeople in the courts where they accepted all the absurd claims that the girls gave on witchcraft. An example of this is in Act III when Mary Warren says that the witchcraft claims are not true and that it did not happen but Abigail and the girls instead blame Mary Warren for witchcraft and everyone believes them. They were all really scared during this time and they believed all the things the girls were saying even though they were absurd. During McCarthyism the same thing happened and people were full of fear and hysteria. This took place after World War II and Americans were filled with the fear that communists would take over America and so they believed in all the events that happened because of their fear of communism. Joseph McCarthy’s claims on communism also intensified the public's concern for Communists in America and it made more people start accusing government officials. The media during this time was also not doing anything to stop the hysteria because they believed that if they stood up to McCarthy they would be accused and suspected of being a Communist and they were too scared to go through with that. We can now see that fear can do awful things to a person’s decision making skills and that people are far more likely to agree with something when they

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