Throughout the course of American history there has been many two persecutions that have been very similar to one other, but they were separated by almost 3 centuries. One of these events was the “witch hunts”, Salem Witch Trials, and the other was McCarthyism. Because of these controversial topics, Arthur Miller wrote his play called The Crucible, in which he uses the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 to exhibit the dangerous McCarthyism, the bystander effect, and mass hysteria. Another intention of writing was the hope that society would learn and grow from the past, instead of ignoring and repeating it again. In the 1950’s Senator Joseph McCarthy said “The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205 … a list …show more content…
Mass hysteria is when a large amount of people shares the same fear and begin taking drastic action. Mass hysteria is caused by a group of people, or one-person panicking causing an even larger group of people to panic commonly for no reason. An example of this reaction is, for example is in the first season of Pokémon the TV show. There is one episode that never aired in the United States because of an outbreak of nausea and seizures that affected 12,000 Japanese children after they watched it in 1997. The episode, “Cyber Solider Porygon” featured bright flashing lights that some believe caused the seizures, but most likely it was a simple case of mass hysteria. In Act One of The Crucible, Hale tries to get the names of other people involved in witchcraft when he says: “[Tituba] the Devil is out and preying on her [Abigail] like a breast upon the flesh of a pure lamb. “(Miller 47). While Hale collects the names, the entire town enters a hysteric state, and no one can be trusted. This mass hysteria is very relatable to the time of McCarthyism because McCarthy’s speech sent the American people into a wild spiral, so wild that they suspected everyone as a