Preview

Comparing The Salem Witch Trials In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
646 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Comparing The Salem Witch Trials In The Crucible By Arthur Miller
Can you recall anyone in history who had extreme beliefs? In Arthur Miller's “The Crucible,” which talks about the Salem witch trials, there are parallels to the McCarthy era because, they were both very tense times. People were being accused of conspiring and had to face consequences for actions they might have not even done.
People were being falsely accused of conspiring against God. In Salem the people were very avid about their religion, therefor being accused of witchcraft was as to be conspiring against God. The Nurses were being falsely accused by the Putnams of witchcraft. Goody Putnam we jealous of Goody Nurse. The Putnams had “laid seven babies unbaptized in the earth” and had less land, whereas the Nurses had 11 children and 26

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In neither McCarthyism nor the Salem witch trials were real evidence put forth to prove the guilt of the accused. Instead, people readily agreed with the accusers, having to assume that they were telling the truth. In the fifties, with the war going badly in Korea, the communists were making advances in China and Eastern Europe, which caused the American public to be scared of communists infiltrating the U.S. government. Hundreds of people- actors, government workers, and even military personnel, were accused by McCarthy (Joseph McCarthy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Some admitted to being affiliated with the communist party, and lost their jobs. In 17th century Salem, the girls would completely fabricate evidence against the witches.…

    • 889 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the book “The Crucible”, by Arthur Miller, Deputy Danforth is more to blame for the trials continuation than Abigail Williams because he always believed whoever had been accused a witch, refused any evidence showing that the accused were innocent, and was more concerned with the court’s image than justice being served.…

    • 352 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Salem Witch Trials are known as a series of people being accused and prosecuted of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts beginning in February 1692 until May 1693. The trials began after a group of girls claimed that they were possessed by the devil. Several local women were accused of witchcraft and this began the wave of hysteria that would forever haunt Salem and leave a painful legacy for a long time to come. Nearly every major school of historians has attempted to explain the answer to the mystery of the trials, trying to understand why they occurred. From Marxists who blame class conflict, to Freudians who believe in mass hysteria, the more ecologically based historians who put the blame on hallucinogenic ergot fungus, and now more…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The HUAC, or the House of Un-American Activities and Committee, started their investigations to find the party of the left wing. In the beginning they investigated 41 people in Hollywood who could be potential left wing members, they narrowed down their search to 19 people. In those 19 people 10 of them refused to say anything and pleaded to the fifth amendment. When accused and were blacklisted, they often had to accuse other people that were affiliated with the left party to get out of being accused. Likewise, in Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible people of the Salem witch trials were no different from what happened in Hollywood. In the Salem witch trials, if one was accused of being a witch and chose not to talk, they would most likely be sentenced…

    • 333 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Do you know about The Salem Witch Trials? If not, keep reading. The Salem Witch Trials were a series of accusations of witchcraft towards older women. This took place between 1692 and 1693. As a result, many innocent people were executed. The Crucible written by Arthur Miller is an example of what partially happen in the Salem Witch Tails using real names and real events in his play. The Crucible is mainly about the innocent people who lost their life’s from an injustice way and conflicts between peddling guilty or not guilty for serving to the devil. The reason Miller wrote the Crucible in the first place was to compare it to the accusations to the United States Administration, accusing anyone who supported Communism with or without evidence.…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Between February 1692 and May 1693, in several towns in the state of Massachusetts, dozens of people were accused of witchcraft. Nineteen people were sentenced to death by the state government because of all the villagers that accused each other of being possessed by the devil. In contemporary times, these events are generally known as the Salem witch trials. A few hundred years later, in the early 1950’s, author Arthur Miller wrote a play about this part of American history called The Crucible. In this analysis I will argue that The Crucible, a play with hysteria and paranoia as main themes, partly represents the McCarthy Era, in which hundreds of United States inhabitants were accused of being communistic without hard evidence.…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fear of the superstition of witchery drove the town of Salem into mayhem causing them to hang many of their own, whom they feared were witches. This is evident when the people of Salem fear the "workings of the devil" and become suspicious that anything out of the ordinary is witchery led by the devil . Imaginations flared as stories were told of Betty (Parris's niece) flying, even though she was only pretending to be witched. Because of the superstition of witchcraft many people became hysterical and accused women of being witches for ridiculous reasons. Some of these reasons included Goody Putnam's babies dying at birth "my babies always shrivelled". The aspect of witchcraft is supposed to be allegorical for McCarthyism where if people did not confess to being a communist, they could be punishment sometimes even being put in prison and many confessed despite it being a lie so that they avoided punishment (Miler was forbidden from writing).…

    • 1098 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Salem Witchcraft trials are notoriously known in history for its mass hysteria and paranoia within colonial Massachusetts during the 17th century. This paper will identify social and religious factors contributing to the Salem with-hunt, provide insight to who was behind it and why, and compare and contrast other examples of mass hysteria with that of the Salem witch-hunt.…

    • 913 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Salem Possessed Analysis

    • 774 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Boyer and Nissenbaum's explanation for the outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem hinges on an understanding of the economic, political and personal…

    • 774 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    An additional cause of the accusations in Salem may have started from the existence of hysteria. In the article Hysteria in Four Acts, it is suggested that, “When psychiatrists use the term, they mean to identify something more specific: namely, a perverse human behavior in which individuals act in ways that imitate actual physical or psychological disorder” (McHugh 2). Hysteria potentially existed in Salem based on the ideas in this text. The behavior exemplified by the victims of false accusations complies with the symptoms of hysteria.…

    • 418 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In The Crucible Miller demonstrates the evils within the human nature through the experience of the Salem Witch Trials. Many characters in this play endure their own personal crucibles. First, Elizabeth Proctor has the ignominy of keeping a terrible secret. Also, Giles Corey goes through a deadly trial trying to protect his neighbor. Finally, Mary Warren, a shy and timid girl, has the impossible task of going against Abigail and the court. Each of these characters’ crucibles are very excruciating, but only some pass while others fail.…

    • 576 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Once interrogated for an explanation behind their state, the girls began to accuse the residents of Salem. What caused the villagers to believed the girls’ claims, remains a topic of great debate, however, it is imperative to evaluate the context in which this all unfolded. The belief and condemnation of witches traces back as far as the Old Testament. Likewise, Salem was a community that was dominated by strong religious beliefs, as Ernest King and Franklin Mixon, in what is now known to be one of the most prominent investigations of the Salem witch trials, claim that “The Puritans, and [their] religious doctrine, dominated the area and . . . had a strong presence in daily life”. Taking this into account, it becomes understandable how easy it was for the villagers to reach the conclusion that the afflicted girls had caught the evil hand.…

    • 498 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The most popular historical perspective of what occurred is that in early 1692, the Rev. Samuel Parris’s 9-year-old daughter Betty and his 12-year-old niece Abigail, “began to fall into horrid fits”. There has been debate as to whether these fits were real, or if the girls were just acting. The village doctor could not explain these bizarre “fits”, and blamed it on the supernatural. One must understand that these were Puritans, their belief system at that time gave a great deal of power to the spiritual world. If something good happen to somebody they were said to be in God 's good graces. If something bad happened to somebody, it was said to be the devil 's work.…

    • 2692 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Salem Witch Trials

    • 2766 Words
    • 12 Pages

    Called the devil’s magic, witchcraft was being seen nothing other than one whom holds innocents and a grudge of one whom was innocent of this misjudgment. Most of the accused would be women and even ministers which even were executed unjustly. The women that were mostly accused would be unmarried, childless, widowed, or had reputations in their communities for assertiveness and independence. Though most cases were dismissed do to their baseless means and non proof of existing that would prove of any witchcraft. As you will read in the following will be nothing more than proof and story of a grossly example of what can and could happen by means of assumption and an acquisition of no proof for the terrible happenings in the cold colony of Salem in 1692.…

    • 2766 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lyle Koehler argues that the Salem Witch Trials began due to witch hysteria caused by the fits of the young women being affected by witchcraft. They were given power to accuse the witches and used their power to attack their oppressing forces, such as authority figures. The act of accusing people of being witches was a scapegoat in order gain and retain power in a situation where people felt powerless. They also targeted nontraditional women as they were easier to justify. Many people were accused but, as time progressed the difference between witch and bewitched became almost unclear as multiple bewitched girls were later accused of witchcraft. However, as the accusations went from poorer and less reputable victims to people of more reputation and influence in the colonies; the women accusers seemed to had gone to far and witchcraft accusations and hangings were banned and many accused witches were let free.…

    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays