Gaining power

Throughout The Crucible there are mainly five reasons why the people of Salem keep blaming and convicting one another; either to get out of trouble, gain power, get revenge, protect the lie, or to save reputation.  The most notable one, however, is to gain power.  Condemning the innocent people in Salem of witchcraft all started when Abigail Williams and the other girls tried to gain power by pretending to have been bewitched into working with the devil, all in order to escape punishment from being caught dancing in the woods.  “She made me do it! She made Betty do it!... She send her spirit on me in church…” (act I, 187).  Once she had the people on her side, she manipulated that power even more by causing sudden attacks on herself; “The girl, the Williams girl, Abigail Williams, sir. She sat to dinner in Reverend Parris’s house tonight, and without a word nor warnin’ she falls to the floor… stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, he draw a needle out… she testify it were your wife’s familiar spirit pushed it in.” (act II, 204).  Salem is run by her trying to gain power by deceitfulness and everyone goes along with it, because the ones that don’t end up being charged of witchcraft are sentenced to hang.  

Similar ideals are found in the McCarthyism era.  McCarthy himself tried to gain power of the government by claiming to have a list of communist politicians.  Once this got out the media flooded him for more information and everything he said was broadcasted; giving him control of the media.  With the media under his power he was then able to gain more control by accusing more and more people of being a communist, and more people became afraid to do anything about because just like in Salem if you spoke you were convicted.  This idea of naming names to gain power is found in both McCarthyism and The Crucible.  It shows how people will manipulate anyone to gain control of what they want, in both cases it was control of political power and of the people.

Even in modern times this concept of gaining power to name names is found all over the media.  One example that closely resembles McCarthyism is the NSA supposedly stopping attacks from terrorism.  In the article it mentions how “During Keith Alexander’s presentation in Las Vegas, two slides read simply “54 ATTACKS THWARTED.” The NSA, President Obama, and members of Congress have all said NSA spying programs have thwarted more than 50 terrorist plots. But there’s no evidence the claim is true.”  As a way to gain power these people are blaming terrorism to make themselves look good.  In all three cases, The Crucible, McCarthyism, and the NSA, people are blaming others to gain control.  When they blame something and make it believable, it makes people think irrationally and go against whatever is being blamed.  During The Crucible Abigail blamed the women she didn’t like and got people to believe her when she acted as if possessed by witchcraft.  The other two examples did the same thing by blaming a group, in this case communists and terrorism, and made it look believable by claiming to have stopped this many terrorist attacks or this many communists.  In the end, they all are ultimately naming names to gain power.