Accusations Without Proof
Accusations Without Proof In Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, he tells the story of Salem, Massachusetts during the witch trials. He does this to draw a comparison between the red scare of the 1950s and the false accusations of the girls and the community in Salem in 1692. In his play the little girls who are about twelve to eighteen, they were dancing naked in the forest with a black caldron with Tituba.
Paris is the one who finds them and ow all the girls have to lie and say Tituba is in touch with the devil, act like they see evil spirits, and say that people were witches even thou they were not. In the end a lot of people die over silly things that could not even be proven. Some of the things they would do for punishment was, they would hold them underwater for ten minutes and if they came back up dead they were not witches, if they were alive they were. It was a lose lose method and not the best way to solve things.
Most cases they came up dead. Another thing they would do is Just hang hem and not give them a chance to explain themselves. When they would take them into court and testify that they were not in touch with the devil the girls would act like they see things, and start to get scared. One girl went as far as faking a coma for several hours. The people that died did not deserve to over something silly like little girls trying to get out of trouble. This was much like the Red Scare because, everyone was paranoid thinking communism was taking over.
People were questioned to see if they were communist, ust like in The Crucible. It Just goes to show how fast rumors can spread. Arthur Miller wrote about The Crucible because he wanted to show how close it was to the Red Scare, and that people would be questioned without proof. The point of this book is to demonstrate how hysteria and rumors can cause people a lot of problems, which in this case caused several people to die. In the Red Scare people thought Russians were spreading communism. In The Crucible people thought witchcraft was spreading through Salem.
The girls went as far as letting eople close to them die Just to save themselves from getting in trouble. When Proctor and another member of Salem start an argument over whose land they are on, rumors start to spread that the girls are doing this to get their neighbors land. Elizabeth is the one who convinces John into admitting that he has seen the devil. John agrees to do it. The officers of the court rejoice in finding out something about the trials. But John refuses to give up anymore names in which he saw with the devil.
The officers of the court want John to make his confession public but he grows ith anger and tears up the document he was suppose to sign. John and three others were hung at the very end of the book. All of the Salem witch trials could have been avoided if the group of girls would nave Just contessed to dancing naked in the torest. They could nave saved several lives from being ended and unnecessary punishments. People had to sit in Jail for years and would have killed themselves instead of going crazy in Jail.
In the end they still got in trouble but if they would have confessed right away they would have robably Just got in minor trouble instead of ending up having a bunch of innocent people. The court didn’t handle the situation in the right manor either. They put people in Jail that they had no proof against. They could have thought of better ways to decide if they were witches or not instead of having them killed. In conclusion all of the Salem Witch Trials could have been avoided and lives could have been saved if the self-centered girls would have Just confessed right away. “Mr. Hale, you surely do not doubt my Justice. ” -Danforth
