In the past years, people have gone through extreme measures to protect themselves of accused witchery. These accusations have led to death, hate, and fear to rise as a result, people would no longer trust each other and everything would be said carefully in order to avoid being blamed for something unreal. Arthur Miller demonstrates these events of witchery in the story The Crucible, the story shows the lengths that people go through to protect themselves and how it affected the society as a whole. In the 1950s, however, a similar event happened in which the Communist Party brought distrust and tensions in society. Millers article “Are You Now or Were You Ever?”, discusses how the McCarthy Era in the 1950s and the Salem Witch Trials are abundantly similar since both dealt with fear and paranoia in society, this led to the writing of The Crucible to begin as a result with rhetorical strategies such as rhetorical questions and the appeal to ethos. …show more content…
In the McCarthy and Salem witch trials era’s there were various moments of unfairness which led to the many rhetorical questions to be used. In the McCarthy Era, the Red Scare had brought fear upon the people, since there was anti-communist in the era, many were afraid that they would be labeled as a communist and be hunted which led to the destroyment of lives and friendships. In the article, Miller mentions, “What right had any organisation to demand anyone’s pledge of loyalty” (5). The reason for Miller stating how anyone could demand his loyalty was due to being asked by Columbia to sign an anti-communist declaration that would ward off picket lines (5). It can be seen that Miller was shocked of the extent that panic and fear were rising as a result of the communist which led to the rhetorical question to be