“There were four of them. There were four”, were the words that Tituba uttered before accusing numerous women of witchcraft and of dealing with the devil; numerous innocent women. "I have here in my hand a list of 205, a list of names who have been disclosed to the Secretary of State as members of the Communist Party and yet who are still working and shaping policy in the State Department," were the words of Senator McCarthy before accusing hundreds of innocent people and a few not-so-innocent government employees of being communist spies. The Crucible, written in the early 1950s during the reign of Senator Joseph McCarthy, strongly reflects the anti-communist movement that was occurring at the time, led by Joseph McCarthy. The events and characters of Miller's work reveal the dramatic, anxious, and hysterical actions and accusations that came with The Red Scare. A parallel between McCarthy's world and The Crucible is how people reacted to thoughts of witches or communists infiltrating their societies and how this caused hysteria throughout the cities. In Salem, confessing and giving up other “witches” was a way to get out of the noose, but it was also a way to increase rumors about witches in Salem. Tituba was forgiven because she confessed that she had dealt with the devil and that she had renounced Goody Osborne and Sarah Good. Then Goody Osborne and Sarah Good became known as witches, proving that witches had come to Salem and sowing doubt about the innocence and purity of others. Many others in the city gave false confessions and countless names when they were convicted, this was seen as a way to evade punishment, most confessions were lies just to escape a noose. As in the case of the alleged Salem witches, suspected communists were encouraged to confess a ...... middle of paper ...... as truth in court, providing the court with evidence to also accuse Mary Warren as a witch. Not only were there events that showed McCarthy in The Crucible, but also specific characters. The prime example is Sarah Bishop who had once been accused of witchcraft in another city and had a reputation permanently scarred due to the previous accusation. This made her an easy target for the city, a woman whose reputation as a witch was already imprinted, who did not condone witchcraft, and for whom no one could vouch. It would have been easier to believe that this woman was involved in witchcraft if she had already suspected it. McCarthy's Sarah Bishop is a couple who ended up in the electric chair. The Rosenbergs had been suspected of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians the year before, making people believe that this couple had been caught selling nuclear secrets was an easy task.