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The Crucible Literary Analysis

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The Crucible, Red Scare, and Palmer Raids are all connected under fear and lies. Throughout the events that occur, multiple lies are created which cause mass amounts of fear and chaos. This chaos weakens the place, causing its inhabitants to lose sight of the truth. As time passes, the severity increases leading to greater consequences. A mass of fear can all be created by one person.
The Palmer Raids were a series of raids by the United States Department of Justice intended to capture, arrest and deport radical leftists. The raids took place under the command of A. Mitchell Palmer, Attorney General of the United States from 1919 to 1921, in November 1919 and January 1920. The Palmer Raids and these massive arrests occurred on the main basis …show more content…
Throughout the story of the Crucible we see multiple times where fear has ruled the actions of a character. We have also seen characters from the Crucible who display similar characteristics to that of those in the Red Scare. Abigail Williams is directly parallel to Joseph Mccarthy. Both of these people use sly trickery to create mass chaos and fear. McCarthy built himself upon a false pillar of lies and deception similar to Abigail who created false stories of witchcraft to save herself. Throughout the actions, she would always provide false reassurance to those who doubted her, “I never sold myself! I’m a good girl! I'm a proper girl!” (Miller pg 40). As Abby moved forward she began to manipulate the fear that was created similar to McCarthy. McCarthy used the fear to gain power, often in fear there is chaos and in chaos people become blind to the truth and therefore they believed McCarthy. When Abby began the tale of witchcraft, she created both fear and chaos that would blind Salem from seeing that it was all a lie. For both, as the lies continued they would create larger lies and accusations, similar to the mass arrests main in the Palmer Raids. At one point McCarthy claimed that he held a list of 250 names (Malaspina pg14). In the Crucible, Abby created a false scene of a figure in the courthouse coming to attack her, “Look out! She’s coming down!” (Miller pg.109). Once their plans took action the fear engulfed their place of residents. In both cases, once fear took control, there was chaos and disbelief. McCarthy turned neighbors on neighbors, families on families. During the Red Scare everyone was scared and paranoid of communism, similar to the Crucible. In the Crucible, Abby convinced a group of girls to follow her lead into the chaos and begin making larger accusations. In Salem, the girls began accusing anyone who opposed the belief of witchcraft. The girls would follow in

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