What Are The Similarities Between The Crucible And Mccarthyism

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History repeating itself:The Crucible and McCarthyism

The Crucible and McCarthyism is like history repeating itself. Both events are very parallel in many ways! The Crucible consists of how people were treated during the Salem witch trials in the 1690s and McCarthyism took place in 1940s/1950s it consists of how people were accused and treated as a threat to the government. The Crucible and McCarthyism both are parallel by accused people making sacrifices to prove innocence,abuse of great power and the effects of hysteria in both events.

Looking back, One similarity on how the Crucible and McCarthyism are parallel is because of the sacrifice people made because they did …show more content…

In the Crucible during the wicked witch trials out of panic and fear of making confessions some of the people started accusing others. For example when one of the main characters Abigail gets pressured into saying all of these names of people who she saw did witchcraft. (Abigail: I want to open myself! I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil;I saw him;I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil pg 48;Act One) She also says many other names but this shows how the hysteria affected her. During McCarthyism the accusations of people being communist people also pressured the accused into confessing and stating names because of the consequences of being blacklisted or guilty. Mr.Kazan remained silent at his first testimony and he went back to testify after feeling guilty. According to document A, “ For the approximately 19 months of my membership, I was assigned to a “unit” composed of those party members who were, like myself, members of the Group Theater acting company. These were Lewis Leverett, J.Edward Bromberg, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky,Tony Kraber, Paula Miller, Clifford Odets and Art Smith. These are the only members of the unit whom I recall and I believe this to be a complete list”. This shows how the effect of being a communist made Kazan confess and tell all of these