How Did The Salem Witch War Affect The Crucible

During the long and gruesome second world war, the Soviet Union and the United States were allies because their mutual goal was to destroy the strong military powerhouse of Germany. After completing this daunting task, the United States and Soviet Union each became eager to obtain sole possession atop the international spectrum, meaning the world’s leading superpower. An era known as the Cold War began immediately following World War II and lasted well into the latter twentieth century, but this “war” was not the usual physical war that fills history but a bloodless war of social and governmental world dominance. Although the Cold War did not involve actual fighting and the loss of numerous United States soldiers’ lives, the tension filled

The dramatic work directly portrayed the Salem witch trials of early American history, but the play also symbolized the Cold War as the play was written at the initiation of the era and displayed the fears and mass hysteria that paralleled those of the anti-communism movement. Reverend Parris, for example, was crammed with the fear that he would lose his job if the rumor that witchcraft possessed his daughter spread about the town of Salem, Massachusetts. Parris was a religious preacher in Salem, so he was a prominent leader in the community. Witchcraft in Miller’s text was the equivalent of communism during the Cold War; if you participated, you were extremely punished for such terrorist actions. Therefore, if Parris’ daughter was said to be enveloped with witchcraft, his name would lose most, if not all, of its power and reputation as a citizen and as a preacher. Parris was highly aware of these consequences and placed a vast importance on maintaining the condition of his daughter a secrecy. The fact that one’s reputation could be destroyed based on a rumor dispersed fear in everyone that lived in the United States during the Cold War or during the Salem witch trials in the seventeenth

As the action progressed, more and more people turned on each other in hopes of themselves or close acquaintances avoiding prosecution. John Proctor betrayed the quite interesting relationship he held with Abigail Williams in hopes of sparing his wife from inevitable death by hanging. Proctor and Williams retained a highly intimate relationship, but these feelings were shattered because Proctor feared the hanging of his wife was rapidly nearing. Similarly, during the commencement of the Cold War in the United States, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy created a list of government officials that he claimed to be active communists. Government officials controlled their own social status and national fraternity in the United States during the mid-twentieth century, so by “exposing” other government officials, McCarthy abandoned his own class of colleagues in order to satisfy the fear and mass hysteria associated with ideas that communism was gaining power in the federal government. Although McCarthy could not prove his accusations, his disturbance fed the public’s fear of a rising Communist Party and contributed to the mass hysteria that the Soviet Union’s communist practices would spread and influence American government. Miller did not directly