Essay Comparing The Crucible And Mccarthyism

The Red Scare caused many innocent people to become very afraid to express their ideas. This, due to the risk of communist accusations. This relates to the crucible because in The Crucible people feared practicing there normal beliefs and living out there day to day lives because they feared to get accused of witchcraft.
The characters accused of witchcraft in the crucible where Tituba, Abigail, and others. Once accused of witchcraft they “we’ll be whipped” (Miller 20) as a consequence and then the victims named other people that made a deal with the devil or committed witchery. The same thing happened in McCarthyism, once accused of communism the accused normally give up names of other communists. The same thing happened in both events, once a person, accused of either witchcraft or communism, then they say if anyone else practiced one of the same things.
The girls in The Crucible claimed

that other practiced witchcraft, The same thing happened in the event of McCarthyism. In the crucible a few characters thought that “they’re pretending” (Miller 111) to see the devil in “court what court” (Miller 56) to avoid accusations of witchcraft. In the Red Scare people tried to avoid known communism to protect themselves from accusations of communism. The people in The Crucible try to avoid getting accused because they lose their land and get hanged. During McCarthyism, if person became accused of communism, their jobs increasingly became put at risk. The accused got their reputation damaged and their image ruined.
During the Red Scare, people worried about others accusing them of communism because chances of them losing their job became very likely, as this ruins their reputation as well. In The Crucible when people confessed of dealing with the devil, they said that because they protected themselves from the accusations of hanging. Accused persons wanted the court to “let them keep their name” so their honor keep getting looked up to. This relates to The Crucible because Arthur Miller only wrote The Crucible because of the accusations made against him.
In The Crucible individuals accused of witchcraft, lost their property. In McCarthyism, people accused of communism, go to jail and/or lose their jobs. In both circumstances, after accused, the victims lose their source of income. This affected their families immensely. Children ended up parentless because of the jailings and hanging of their parents. In the Crucible with John sentenced to hang, and Elizabeth to jail, while “having three children” that need to go live friends and not around there parents “how may I teach them to walk like men in the world” ( Miller 145) and learn things on there own. Similar to McCarthyism in as much jail sentenced left children parentless.
The events described in both McCarthyism and The Crucible show many similarities.

One of the similarities consist of how individuals struggled to keep jobs after accused of either witchcraft or communism. This, due to their names losing honor in the eyes of other people in their communities, making it more difficult to keep or get a job. Another similarity consist of how families went through hard times in both the Crucible and McCarthyism. Even if not accused families live’s became stressful because of the possibility of accusations. Trust also became a big problem in towns these events occurred in. Citizens refused trust other citizens in their communities for fear of their livelihood’s and properties, as lies became commonplace in an effort to obtain more land at the expense of others. During McCarthyism trust because a problem as well. In exchange for lighter punishment, accused communists gave up names of others, guilty or not. Therefore, trust came very far and few between in these communities. Given the examples above, The Crucible and McCarthyism relate to each

other.