Similarities Between The Crucible And Mccarthyism

Thomas Bevilacqua

Mrs. Goldberg

Honors English 11 - 2B

31 March 2023

The Crucible and McCarthyism: What Are the Parallels?

Imagine being completely helpless, unable to defend yourself against the accusations of a crime you did not commit. The only way to save yourself is to give up others' names, guilty or not, and put them in your situation. This was the essence of both McCarthyism and the Salem witch trials. Though the events were hundreds of years apart, McCarthyism being in the early 1950’s with the Salem witch trials being in 1692/93, they had many parallels according to The Crucible. The Crucible was released in 1953, a time when McCarthyism was on a rampage throughout America. Though the play was about the Salem witch trials of Massachusetts

What are the similarities between Senator Joe McCarthy’s McCarthyism and Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible”? Parallels between McCarthyism and the Crucible could include giving up others names for self protection or promotion, an invisible crime that is near impossible to prove, and a punishment for not giving up others names.

The first parallel between McCarthyism and the Crucible is that people would give up others' names for self protection or promotion. Most people would use others' names to protect themselves and their livelihoods like Elia Kazan in document A or Tituba in document B. In document B it states that “After being accused by Abigail Williams, Tituba, a slave, has confessed that the Devil came to her with four other people.” (Document B). This was a show of Tituba protecting herself because she knew that if she had not given some sort of confession then she would be tortured and hanged. Abigail was also protecting herself in document B when, after being accused of witchcraft herself, she started listing names of people she saw with the Devil to push the blame to them. In document A, Elia Kazan gave up the names of 8 other people in the film industry to protect his directing career. After refusing to answer

Both McCarthyism and the Crucible had a crime that had very limited evidence and could not be fully proven without a confession. This is one of the biggest parallels because of how it was handled in both the real life events and in the story. Instead of being suspicious of the easily falsified evidence, people trusted it full heartedly. Even though, during his first speech on the subject, McCarthy stated he had “a list of two hundred and five” names and then changed it multiple times people didn’t get suspicious. It went to “the names of 57 communists who are in the State Department” for the president, then “in the following weeks, McCarthy bumped this number up to 81 and then shaved it down to 10”(document C). He also never made this list public, which should have raised even more suspicion. This is parallel but more obvious in the Crucible because of the girl's actions and the reactions of the court officials. In document D Danforth openly admits that “witchcraft is a ipso facto, on it’s face and by it’s nature, an invisible crime is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? the witch and the victim. None other.” This quote is of Danforth openly admitting that there is no evidence for the crime of witchcraft and that the word of the supposed victim must be trusted over evidence. This is the same in both McCarthyism and the Crucible because instead