In 1692, a fear of witchcraft led to the accusation of over 200 townspeople. Of those 200, 20 hanged. Throughout the Crucible, it explains the ridiculous trials the people went through to try to prove their innocence. This is parallel to the Red Scare because people went to great lengths to prove their innocence of McCarthyism. In the Crucible, there is multiple occasions where the events that happen are parallel to McCarthyism because the Crucible is an allegory to McCarthyism.
The Crucible mirrors McCarthyism because even though “tis hard to prove” (Miller, 75) the court believed unsustainable girls and believed they saw the Devil in people. They accepted that “the Devil may be among them” (Miller, 27) and would do anything to clean the town of such sins. During the 1950’s, non evidential claims would be taken seriously. McCarthy was a Senator who made a list of people he claimed to be known communists working for the State Department. The state believed McCarthy and the people got treated badly because they were wrongly accused of
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If someone “hangs for a witch he forfeit up his property” (Miller, 99) and then others would fight to get their property. In the Red Scare, those accused lost their jobs and their well earned respect. For example, Helen Keller’s reputation is practically spotless but once branded with communism, that went downhill. In the Crucible, Rebecca Nurse was accused of witchcraft, who was seen as the “mother” of Salem and had a pure reputation. This just shows that people blindly believed what they were told without really thinking about it. In Salem, as well as the United States, the people would do anything to avoid their fears.
The biggest comparison to the Red Scare and the Crucible is fear. Throughout history it’s been made clear the “that the things that frighten us most are often quite different from those most likely to harm us” (Stern, 2)