In 1692, a fear of witchcraft led to the accusation of over 200 townspeople. Of those 200 people, 20 hanged. Throughout The Crucible, it explains the ridiculous trials the people went through to try to prove their innocence. The Red Scare shows parallelism to The Crucible because people went to great lengths to prove their innocence of McCarthyism, just like they tried to do when accused of witchcraft. The Crucible contains multiple occasions where the events that happen parallel McCarthyism such as: the unreasonable claims, the hostility towards the accusers, and the fear that caused it all. During the 1950s, McCarthyism developed into an allegory to The Crucible.
The Crucible mirrors McCarthyism because even though “tis hard to prove”…show more content… Throughout history, “ the things that frighten us most are often quite different from those most likely to harm us”. (Stern, 2) This proved to be true yet again in 1692 in Salem, as well as the United States. The United States hardcore believes in capitalism. At the time, communism became the worst possible thing imaginable. The terrifying threat of the Soviet Union growing made them feel useless so the nation put their trust in the government. So when McCarthy’s list came out of known communist it made America feel better, as if they successfully stopped the spread of communism. In Salem, they considered themselves a proud religious community. The thought of the devil in their town seemed embarrassing. The fact respectable men and women “would bind to the Devil’s service” (Miller, 141) humiliated the town so they tried to stop the witchcraft from spreading, much like the United States with communism. The Salem residents tried to stop the spread of witchcraft by hanging the accused. The paranoia of witchcraft overtook the residents lives, just how the threat of communism caused paranoia to the United States.
According to the dictionary, an author usually writes an allegory to convey a hidden message about political climate, for many reasons The Crucible and McCarthyism fit this definition. To make a point, he wrote The Crucible to show how ridiculous the United States reacted. The book, The Crucible,
