McCarthyism and The Crucible “It is mistaken law that leads you to sacrifice. Life, woman, life is God 's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it…it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride (Miller).” This may not have been an actual quote from someone during the Salem witch trials, but this quote is not just about the trials that occurred in the 1600s. This quote from the Reverend John Hale, was also about the trails that occurred in the McCarthyism Era. It was the late 1940s when hysteria had set in and had lasted till the late 1950s. Everyone in the United States was filled with fear because of communism. This intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States was known as McCarthyism. Another name for this time period was the Second Red Scare, which “coincided with increased fears …show more content…
The person accused of being a communist or being affiliated with one could have been innocent of the charges. However, during the hysteria the American people did not trust one another much like the people of Salem in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The Lack of trust was not the only thing in common between The Crucible and McCarthyism. A couple of the other traits that Arthur Miller’s play and the Second Red Scare, were the lack of evidence and the fact that if you confessed you went free and if you did not confess you went to prison or possibly worse. Since there was no proof that the accused were in fact guilty of communism or being a witch, numerous amounts of people were punished for an act of which they did not