Myths And Heroes

A myth can be a story from Ancient Greece or a legend or a folk tale which deals with a person who is admired for his deeds. A hero is someone who risks his life and who is known for his noble qualities such as courage and power.

Now, we’re going to establish the link between witch hunting in the 17th century and in the 20th century.

First of all, we’re going to speak about the witches and witch hunting in the 17th century in America and secondly we’re going to see the Red Scare, “witch hunting” in America in the 20th century.

I. Witch Hunting in 17th century

Salem, in Massachusetts, is the city where witch hunting took place, was governed by puritans who was from Great Britain. They were the only in America, which had no federal government. Puritans had moral values and beliefs, for example, adultery was considered as a capital offence, they had to wear dark clothes without accessories and their beliefs led them to find spiritual meanings in various objects.

When several girls fell sick and had fever, puritans were convinced that these girls were witches because there wasn’t any medical explanation. For the community, these girls were bewitched by the Devil. As a consequence there was a Puritan inquisition during which twenty people were hanged and two hundred were accused and were on a trial.

The extract of The Crucible, by the playwright Arthur Miller, shows how people were denounced by others. The scene takes place in Salem in 1692. Betty and Abigail are naming names of people who will be under arrest.

Unlike our representations of witches, they were young women, wrongfully accused of witchcraft. According to several historians, witch hunting was a pretext to search for scapegoats.

This story can help us understand the Red Scare in the 20th century.

II. “Witch Hunting” in the 20th century

Then, we must know that Communists were considered as traitors for the nation and, like witches, Communists were scapegoats. This “scare” of Communists was reinforced by the Cold War hysteria: people were afraid of communists of the USSR. Americans thought that the nation was endangered by them: they wrongfully distrusted communists and several persons were exiled by the FBI simply because they were “communists”. Joseph Mc Carthy, an American senator, was an important figure of the Red Scare.

The Red Scare led to a blacklisting of many people but the suspects were not only anonymous people, it could be personalities too. With the movie One of Hollywood Ten by Karl Francis, we understand that The Hollywood Ten were ten celebrities of the Hollywood film industry (like Disney, Gary Cooper) who were censored because they were regarded as Communists and they could influence spectators to be a communist, the country didn’t want this.

Arthur Miller wrote this previous play allegory The Crucible to McCarthyism when the US government accused blacklisted communists because it has the same parallel with the “witch hunting” in the 17th century, it’s the new witch hunting.

To conclude, both of these events deal with the blacklisting of innocents people who were banished of the society, were pariah of the nation. Witches were scapegoats of puritans and Communists were scapegoats of

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