Similarities Between Joseph Mccarthy And The Crucible

In both storylines, there are characters that parallel each other and allow the viewers to see the overarching themes that permeate both movies. In Good Night and Good Luck, the main antagonist, Joseph McCarthy, is a foil for The Crucible’s Abigail Williams. They play the same role in the plot development of the movies and serve as antagonists who cause nothing but trouble. Although they differ in some aspects of their character, much of their motives and methods are quite similar.

Joseph McCarthy, the junior senator from Wisconsin, began with little recognition and little power. He was relatively new to the game of politics and in order to climb the political ladder, he had to make a name for himself and do something noteworthy. He went about this in the form of accusing people of communism. He wanted to portray himself as a hero who was saving the future of America from the evil communists who lived amongst the American people. He played on the existing fear of communism and heightened it by accusing random people who, in truth, had no actual connections to the communist party. This situation gained McCarthy a lot of publicity and he became the

most influential person in America for the time. His accusations which end up being false, are regarded as initially true and cause the nation to turn against one another. The movie, Good Night and Good Luck shows the senator as the villain but focuses the plot more on the characters who attempt to fight back against these false accusations. When Murrow directly attacks McCarthy to prove his accusations and methods as false, McCarthy returns by simply accusing those associated with the show such as Reed Harris, of being communist themselves. The audience is left despising McCarthy and the damage he caused through his actions.
Just like McCarthy, Abigail Williams leads her society to hysteria through her wild accusations of crimes that were never committed. In Abigail’s case, the crime was witchcraft and the punishment was death versus the scenario of McCarthyism where the punishment would be only jail or societal estrangement. Abigail began her escapades without any power. Unlike senator McCarthy, she started from the very bottom. Her status as not only a woman, but as practically still a child, meant that she was used to not being listened to and being told to be quiet. When presented with the dilemma of explaining her way out of the dancing in the woods, she snatched the opportunity to gain power for herself by accusing people of witchcraft.
As Arthur Miller states in his introduction, “The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression.

It was also, and as importantly, a long overdue opportunity for every-one so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims … Long-held hatreds of neighbors could now be openly expressed, and vengeance taken.” (Miller 7) He explains that Williams accusations were not simply the result of her repression of expression due to her status, it also became a channel for all her and her friends hatred to spew out. The pent up feelings and communal dislikes of certain people were now voiced in the form of cries of witchcraft. This is similar to McCarthyism because people already feared the crime and when given the opportunity, jumped on their neighbors in fear they were

involved.
Abigail gained enormous power in Salem as she became the primary person trusted to bring out the witches who were in league with Satan. She flourished under her newfound power and used it to try to get her eventual goal of marrying John Proctor. Just like McCarthy, Abigail eventually gets suspected of fraud and lashes back by accusing that person of crimes. In Act III, when Proctor gets Mary Warren to say she believe Abigail to be fraudulent, Abigail quickly returns by feigning torture by Mary Warren’s spirit as she says such things as, “Oh, Heavenly father, take away this shadow!” (Miller 109) The dramatic moments such as this lead the audience to become emotionally involved in the plot and give Abigail a stronger impression on the audience.
Although both Joseph McCarthy and Abigail Williams used the techniques of preying on existing fears of both communism and witchcraft, their portrayal in the movies differed slightly, allowing the audience to become more involved with Abigail and her story. Her story was explored more and her motives were more clear as her background was more well described. This lead to her having a more profound effect on viewers rather than the distant presence of Joseph McCarthy.