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The Crucible: Historical Witch Hunts

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CJ Canale Mrs. Cheney English III/Per 3 December 5, 2015 The Crucible – Historical Witch Hunts A witch-hunt is the act of unfairly looking for and punishing people who are accused of having opinions that are believed to be dangerous or evil. The topic of this research paper is McCarthyism and how it affected Arthur Miller and others in the 1950s and how the events compare to the events in his play The Crucible. McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, especially of pro-Communist activity, in many instances unsupported by proof or based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence. Joseph McCarthy a Wisconsin Senator from 1947-1957 started McCarthyism. McCarthyism was a witch-hunt because Joseph McCarthy started …show more content…

In The Crucible when everyone found out that someone was being accused of Witchcraft they all became scared for their lives. The same thing that happened in the United States during McCarthyism when someone was accused of being a Communist everyone became scared of that person. During The Crucible Thomas Putnam accuses Beatty Parris of Witchcraft with no evidence that she had anything to do with witchcraft. In McCarthyism McCarthy blamed people being Communists when he had no proof they were Communists. In The Crucible if you did not confess to being a witch or associating with the devil you were hanged just like John Proctor was when he did not confess to seeing the devil. During McCarthyism Arthur Miller did not confess and he was charged with contempt of court also during McCarthyism if you were labeled a Communist you were theoretically dead to everyone else. The last way The Crucible compares to McCarthyism is both societies are scared of something completely out of hand the things that they are scared are not really going to happen. Both of these events prove that people are very gullible and believe everything they hear. In conclusion, both of these events got very out of hand due to the unreasonable fears that all societies have also Thomas Putnam and Joseph McCarthy blew all of this up because Putnam wants to take down a very powerful man in Salem and McCarthy was just power hungry. Salem Witch trials and McCarthyism were just people trying to take over by scaring people into believing in scares that were

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