A witch hunt is an attempt to find, blame or punish a certain group of people who are being blamed for something, most of the time it's simply because of their opinions and not because they actually did something wrong. In the play,”The Crucible”, Arthur Miller picks apart and dives into the Salem Witch Trials and how they were wrongfully conducted under the said “law.” The characters manipulated the whole society of their village into believing the nonsense idea of witchcraft and who was a witch based on their personal opinions and theories. The Free Speech Center in their article “Miller was influential playwright post-World War II” stated, “During the tense and hard time of McCarthyism, Arthur Miller was inspired to write a play reflecting …show more content…
The event I researched demonstrated a metaphorical witch hunt by comparing one group of people being blamed and held responsible for something that wasn't even proven to be a fact that they did it. Like a witch hunt and more specifically in The Crucible, the witch hunt happened was a town picking out people who had done “wrong” or did not fit into their very strict lifestyle and made theories about them and what their intentions were with the towns people. Mass hysteria can and has happened with these two examples, this is very important to think about when forming non-confirmed opinions on things that haven’t been proven right or correct. The mass hysteria that happened during Covid was due to the unknown, people dying suddenly and the only way the people could try to calm themselves down was to create an explanation bias or not, they found someone/ a group to blame. This parallels The Crucible, pigs dying after being sold by someone, 7 babies dying with no explanation, and finding girls in the woods dancing. The world has been full of witch-hunts, many are happening everyday and the crucible is just a good view of what a witch hunt is and how it works. Especially in the real world situations like the COVID-19