The Crucible and McCarthyism essays

The Crucible and McCarthyism essays In the late 1600s, a tragedy fed by lies and personal grudges swept the town of Salem, Massachusetts. This tragedy was called the Salem Witchcraft Trials, where 20 innocent people were put to death based solely on the accusations of others. These others were also just girls who tried to save themselves by blaming others. After the injustice had been done, another witch hunt wouldnt occur until about 250 years later. However, these new witch hunts werent for witches at all, but for the modern-day threat of communists in our government. Just like the old witch-hunts in Salem, the hunt for communists in the government resulted in many innocent people being wrongly accused and arrested. Though these events are separated by 260 years, the accusations and trials that followed are very similar. In The Crucible, the accusations were made based on feelings of greed, vengeance, jealousy, and fear. In addition, most of the people accused were people who were different from the group, or who looked different in some way. Also, if anyone dared to speak out against these charges, they were likely to be accused of witchcraft themselves. In the McCarthy-era, The kind of people targeted were likely to be left-inclined men and women of the 1930s who had witnessed the Great Crash, depression and chronic unemployment, the cruelty of unfettered capitalism and the rise of Nazism, especially threatening to Jews like Miller. In both time periods, many were wrongfully accused and had their lives ruined. The accused people in Salem had done nothing wrong, yet they were jailed and further punished if they did not confess to committing witchcraft. However, even if the accused did confess and were freed, they were still disgracefully looked upon and shunned by the rest of t he town. In the 1950s, many people lost their jobs and couldnt get jobs if they had been on the blacklist, ...