The Boys Who Cried Wolf: A Plunge Through History The Boy Who Cried Wolf is a common fable known to all but little know of the underlying significance of its message. From Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, dealing with the onset of McCarthyism at the time, McCarthyism itself, and the current political climate, unfounded accusations have been used to gain power and shift blame in the time of crisis throughout history. Simply put, boy’s cry wolf and the people come running. In The Crucible, many characters such as Abigail and Tituba use accusations to shift the blame to someone else to get out of trouble and to prevent others from disagreeing with them. When Abigail is caught going out in the middle of the night and “casting spells” she immediately …show more content…
shifts the blame when Hale says “Did you call the devil? (Miller 156)” she responds “I never called him!
Tituba, Tituba . . . (Miller 156)” If Abigail does not shift the blame she will be seen as conspiring with the devil but by throwing Tituba under the bus Abigail is seen as good but only under the influence of a bad person. As Judge Danforth starts to question Abigail about the validity of her accusations Abigail proclaims “Let you beware Mr.Danforth. Think you to be so mighty that the power of Hell may not turn your wits? Beware of it! (Miller 188)”. She is threatening the judge as his opinion turns to make him consider the consequences of going against Abby. As Abby's defense in court crumbles, more and more are doubting her. Eventually Reverend Hale says “I believe him (pointing at Abigail) This girl has always struck me false! She has-” to put an end to Abby’s wild accusations but she …show more content…
interrupts him and accuses Mary Warren “You will not! Begone! Begone, I say….Why do you come yellow bird….Oh Mary this is a black art to change your shape (Miller 191)”. This creates a diversion and Judge Danforth completely glosses over Hale’s testimony and turns his attention to questioning Mary, turning the tide of the court case back into Abby’s favor. With the world crashing down around them, Abigail and others used accusations to advance their agendas and protect their power. Similar to Abigail, Joseph McCarthy, a US Senator from Wisconsin, used accusations of communists in powerful positions to gain power.
McCarthy was a virtually unknown politician until February 1950, where in a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, he proclaimed “have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department” (History Matters). This speech coined the “Enemies from Within” propelled McCarthy to the political spotlight and gave him huge power along with the support of the American public. McCarthy, realizing he had a great political opportunity, and continued his “anti-communist” tirade accusing powerful people in hollywood and members of the armed forces as being communists or communist sympathizers. As his skeptics grew, so did his blacklist, with McCarthy accusing every single one of his critics as communists destroying their lives and careers in the process (Victims of McCarthyism). McCarthy used this tactic to discourage any opposition, with many potential critics seeing the potential implications of their skepticism, they simply redacted their statements or never spoke
up. The use of accusations to keep power and avoid trouble are not unique to the past as the current US president, Donald J. Trump consistently uses such tactics. Robert Mueller, the head of the Russia investigation probe, has been constantly under attack from the Trump administration. He has accused Mueller of unlawfully obtaining email (Trump Transition Lawyer Accuses Mueller of Unlawfully Obtaining Emails). The basis of these accusation is to delegitimize an ongoing investigation which could reveal potential damaging information about the Trump administration and its previous collusion with Russia on the campaign trail. The book Fire and Fury was a summarization of Trump's first year in office with its primary focus on the multiple ongoing scandals and investigations. Michael Wolff, the writer of the damning book Fire and Fury, and Steve Bannon, a main informant in the book, were repeatedly insulted by Trump with him calling Bannon “Sloppy Steve” and attempting to discredit the book by stating it was “completely false” (Twitter). Trump’s current political strategy has revolved upon multiple “headline” events so that one never stays in the news too long and eventually the public gets desensitized to the whole affair. A culmination of all of these events puts everything in perspective and highlights the very worst of the presidency, something President Trump would not like to happen. Attacking the opposition allows him to shift blame and maintain or increase his political power.
With the onset of the Cold War, a growing Red Scare would cripple American society – effectively plunging the nation into mass hysteria and unrest over the fallacious threat of communist infiltration. This reaction was precipitated by Republican senator, Joseph McCarthy, in his speech, “Enemies from Within”, delivered in Wheeling, West Virginia, on 9 February 1950. McCarthy paints communists in a particularly harsh light to generate anti-Soviet sentiment within the American public. He uses juxtaposition to engender both indignation and fear in the audience to achieve this effect.
In 1956 Arthur Miller was subpoenaed by HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee) and refused to identify writers that were believed to hold communist sympathies. Due to his refusal he was convicted of contempt of congress. The next year, however, the United States Supreme Court overturned this conviction. Under the leadership of McCarthy the committee had so much power that just knowing someone who was suspected of having ties to the communist party was a danger. The lives and careers of hundreds of Americans were ruined because of being blacklisted. Prison, bankruptcy, passport revocation, unemployment were threats made against people for them to testify and “name names.”
“The great difference between our western Christian world and the atheistic Communist world is not political, gentlemen, it is moral,” is one of the many examples throughout McCarthy’s speech of him assuming an overconfident or superior tone. His claim to own a list of 205 names in the State Department of communist sympathizers gave support for this arrogant tone, but when asked McCarthy refused to provide anyone with the aforementioned list. McCarthy also used this tone when he said, “The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores . . . but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation,” expressing the idea that no one but the United States’ own countrymen had the strength to defeat their homeland. McCarthy’s tone throughout the article is one of absolute certainty, and gave his audience the incentive to trust
Her accusations were the reason why the entire witch hunt in Salem came to be. “She comes to me while I sleep; she 's always making me dream corruptions!” This quote from Abigail falsely accusing Tituba of witchcraft is the main reason for the messed up justice in the town of Salem. The good and the innocent start to be accused and convicted by those without integrity. The audience starts to realize the deep problems in Salem. Eventually later on in the book, Abigail comes to realize the power she possesses over the people. She realized that she had the power and control to run the entire town and get what she wanted. This same situation is seen with Corporate America after 9/11. After the attack of 9/11 they saw that people were very paranoid when it came to wanting safety which is why the Bush administration took advantage of Americans by getting them to believe certain laws they wanted were necessary for their safety. Also, the Bush administration tried to get more control of the people by passing a bunch of unneeded laws to Congress. They lied to get what they wanted. The same scenario is shown by Abigail’s followers as they helped lie for her
Abigail asks Tituba to help her cast a love spell on John Proctor. Abigail tells the girls who were also involved to keep quiet. Mary Warren begins to feel guilty and tries to persuade the girls to tell the truth. Abigail disagrees with Mary and browbeats the girls “Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things… I will bring a pointy reckoning and shutter you”. (Miller 1137) Abigail is threatening the girls that if they say anything about her drinking blood she will harm them. Abigail threatens the girls for her own selfish reasons, Abigail Williams is a villain because she would rather lie and hurt people than tell the truth.
Abigail Williams is accused of witchcraft early on. In order to avoid conviction she confesses to witchcraft, accuses Tituba of forcing her to drink blood and do witchcraft, and accuses Elizabeth Proctor, Sarah Good, Goody Osburn, Bridget Bishop, Goody Sibber, Goody Hawkins, Goody Booth, and countless other innocent people in court. She throws herself down in the court and does other dramatic actions in order to convince the court that a person is in fact a witch. This leads to people being falsely accused of witchcraft and forced to accuse others in order to live. Because of Abigail's growing power in the court, people become fearful of her. One of the most important people who begins to fear her is Elizabeth Proctor. Elizabeth is afraid that Abigail will accuse her of witchcraft. She also gives more insight into Abigail's behavior in court. She states that Abigail will “scream and howl and fall to the floor” when the accused are brought forth (50). The people and the court begin to believe that Abigail can see who the witches are. Her words and actions become the deciding factors in a defendants fate.
In Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible”, a dramatic story unfolds about hatred and deception among the townspeople of Salem, Massachusetts in the year 1692. During this time, people were being accused of practicing witchcraft and conjuring with the devil. Once accused, all one could do was deny the practice and hang for it or confess and be condemned to prison. Many took advantage of this, including a young girl by the name Abigail Williams who is the main character in the play. Who is to be blamed for the death of the innocently accused? Many can argue and say that other characters in the story share blame in the Salem Witch Trials. Though, the ultimate responsibility belongs to Abigail for the deaths of many innocent people during this time.
...nce using fear, Abigail successfully protects herself from any type of damage on her reputation by manipulating the court to believing that there is actually a spirit in the court room.
The play “The Crucible” is an allegory for the McCarthyism hysteria that occurred in the late 1940’s to the late 1950’s. Arthur Miller’s play “the crucible” and the McCarthyism era demonstrates how fear can begin conflict. The term McCarthyism has come to mean “the practice of making accusations of disloyalty”, which is the basis of the Salem witch trials presented in Arthur Miller’s play. The fear that the trials generate leads to the internal and external conflicts that some of the characters are faced with, in the play. The town’s people fear the consequences of admitting their displeasure of the trials and the character of John Proctor faces the same external conflict, but also his own internal conflict. The trials begin due to Abigail and her friends fearing the consequences of their defiance of Salem’s puritan society.
The horrors of history are passed on from generation to generation in hopes that they will never occur again. People look back on these times and are appalled at how horrendous the times were; yet, in the 1950s, history repeated itself. During this time, Joseph McCarthy, a United States senator from Wisconsin, began accusing people of being communists or communist sympathizers, which is parallel to the Salem witch trials in the late 1690s when innocent people were accused of practicing witchcraft. One of the people McCarthy accused was author and playwright Arthur Miller. To express his outrage at McCarthy’s actions, miller wrote The Crucible, intentionally drawing similarities between the McCarthy hearings and the Salem witch trials.
On January 7th 1950, an acquaintance said that the communist-in-government issue would attract national publicity and enhance his chances of reelection. His first speech against the issue was on February 9th in Wheeling, West Virginia and McCarthy revealed a sheet of paper with a list of 205 names, who he said, were members of the Communist party. “He could not remember what figure he had quoted at Wheeling, whether it was 205 or 209 or 57 or whatever…” Oakley adds, which shows that McCarthy’s list wasn’t authentic and credible. In an attempt to restore confidence in the Truman administration, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee established a subcommittee headed by Democratic Senator Millard E. Tydings of Maryland to investigate McCarthy’s charges.
McCarthy was elected senate after becoming a lawyer in his sate of Wisconsin. During the first few years of his term nothing major really happened until 1950. In a speech to the Women’s club of wheeling in West Virginia he stated that he had a list in his hand of about 205 known members of the communist party working for the United States department. President Harry Truman had signed an executive order that said that all communists or fascists could not obtain a United States government job. The FBI played a big role in the investigation of this list McCarthy contained. McCarthy’s friend j. Edgar Hoover, which was a violent ant-communist in the federal government, could not wait to expose the people McCarthy accused of being communists. McCarthy’s list created a nationwide scar among the people of the United States. Everything McCarthy said was a lie and he had no evidence to show that the people he accused were really communist but, because of the start of the Korean War and the arrest of two American soldiers accused of spying on the Soviet Union American citizen...
FOR ALMOST fifty years, the words "McCarthy" and "McCarthyism" have stood for a shameful period in American political history. During this period, thousands of people lost their jobs and hundreds were sent to prison. The U.S. government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two Communist Party (CP) members, as Russian spies. All of these people were victims of McCarthyism, the witch-hunt during the 1940s and 1950s against Communists and other leftists, trade unionists and civil rights activists, intellectuals and artists. Named for the witch-hunt's most zealous prosecutor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), McCarthyism was the most widespread and longest lasting wave of political repression in American history. In order to eliminate the alleged threat of domestic Communism, a broad coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, and other anticommunist activists hounded an entire generation of radicals and their associates, destroying lives, careers, and all the institutions that offered a left-wing alternative to mainstream politics and culture. That anticommunist crusade...used all the power of the state to turn dissent into disloyalty and, in the process, drastically narrowed the spectrum of acceptable political debate.[1]
Although she was a smart girl, Abigail was only out for herself and her own reputation. Abigail Williams didn't only lie about witchcraft, but she forced others to join in. She was Reverend Parris's niece and believed she could get away with whatever she wanted. Abigail did not want to have to damage her reputation by having a different testimony as all the other girls, so she forced them to lie as well. While alone with the girls she said, "let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it..." (Miller 1044). Abigail also stuck a needle in herself because she knew Goody Proctor had a poppet at her home with a needle in it. While talking to John Proctor about Abigail, Cheever remarked, "...and, stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, she draw a needle out. And demandin' of her how she come to be so stabbed, she testify it were your wife's familiar spirit pushed it in," (Miller 1077). Abigail may have been the most prominent person to lay the blame on, but other people were guilty as well.
...l, Miller attempts to criticize societies that are governed by hypocrisies as they open the gateway for many to attain previously unreachable levels of power and are able to commit a crime without paying for it by blaming it entirely on someone else on false charges. Miller’s The Crucible does an excellent job in reflecting not only the society in its direct context of Salem but also other societies such as the society of the U.S during McCarthyism. Miller even though being accused of being a communist, is able to pass on his views about how hypocrisy is a dangerous yet immensely famous tool to which societies sometimes fall to in order to achieve almost an anarchy where people’s survival are based on their ability to blame others.