Similarities Between The Crucible And Mccarthyism

The play The Crucible and the rise of McCarthyism as discussed by Fitzgerald in the Red Scare both demonstrate how human nature reacts when confronted with the threat of false accusation and wrong doing. The Crucible is an allegory of the United States during the time of the Cold War in the 1950’s and the rise of McCarthysim under USA senator Joseph McCarthy. The accusations suffered by many characters in The Crucible for witchcraft and the resulting aftermath as the town of Salem reacts to these events. These accusations mirror on how Senator McCarthy, through the FBI, accused many government employees, agents and civilians of being Communists (Fitzgerald 44). In both cases, the accusations were made in the absence of evidence to support them,

As a historical comparison, the characters o the Crucible lived under religious law where only the ways of Christianity were accepted as decided by those that rule the community. In the same way, the 1950’s and the Cold War led many Americans to have an anti-Communist stance and nationalism was encouraged (Fitzgerald 32). In the Crucible, the initial accusation was created when a group of girls were accused of dancing in the the forest, a place considered by Miller as an evil place (Miller 8) in the wake of the mysterious illness of the reverends daughter (Miller 9). During the McCarthy era, the suspicion was started by McCarthy himself as he accused a number of state department officials from being Communist and Soviet spies (Fitzgerald 45-46). In both examples, the initial accusation were groundless as no evidence were presented. However, the idea that some members of the community were performing acts against the existing social norm at that time (going to the forest for group activities, extra marital affairs in the Crucible and being leftist/Communist in the 1950’s) were enough to start wide-spread accusations of these actions. The parallelism between the events described in the two sources demonstrate the similarities on how the rest of the

In both cases, majority of the people rushed into judgment even without the presence of viable evidence, spreading doubt, suspicion and fear for the rest of the community; fear that resulted into many individuals to be constantly on alert and critical of their actions to prevent being accused. These actions can also be interpreted as a way of sharing the blame; a way to help lessen the focus on the guilty and at the same time, make an attempt to shift the blame to others. The play the Crucible focused on this aspect near the end of Act three where the accusations of Mary, an innocent, led to further accusations that involved many innocent citizens in