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Post by sophiapa116 on Oct 8, 2012 17:23:21 GMT -5
Miller is undoubtedly making a comparison between Deputy Governor Danforth and Joseph McCarthy, as they both are chief contributors to the tyranny of consensus. Introduced in Act III, Danforth is portrayed as a manipulating and controlling force in the court. His reputation and that of his court are very important to him, as seen by his manipulation of witchcraft and his decision to continue with the Court hearings. Knowing he was fooled by children, he would rather have innocent people killed than admit it. Likewise, Josef McCarthy manipulates the crisis of Communism during the 1950s. In his speech in Wheeling, WV, McCarthy accuses 205 individuals in the government of being Communists. Despite no actual proof, McCarthy makes this accusation in order to advance himself, feeding the tyranny of consensus. For a similar objective, Danforth sentences innocent civilians to death for witchcraft despite any concrete evidence. However, rather than focusing on personal advancement as McCarthy does, Danforth is focused more on his preservation and that of his court.
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Post by sophiago116 on Oct 9, 2012 17:54:34 GMT -5
I agree with you.
Danforth and McCarthy seem to be starting the myths and accusing many innocent people. McCarthy with his Communist accusations and Danforth with his belief in hanging those accused of witchcraft.
Also, in both cases, the simple accusations will ruin the person's life, even though there is never any reliable evidence.
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Post by gemmala116 on Oct 9, 2012 18:58:23 GMT -5
After our discussion in class today, I am still a little unsure as to why both Danforth and Hathorne collectively represent McCarthy, as opposed to just one of them. In the same way in Acts I and II, why is it that Abigail and Parris show a strong similarity to McCarthy only when they are working together?
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Post by laurensc116 on Oct 9, 2012 19:52:51 GMT -5
To answer the question above, in my opinion, Danforth and Hathorne are both compared to McCarthy as a combination because they are overall pretty similar characters. They both exhibit similar positions in court and the same theory as McCarthy that individuals are either completely with or completely against the court, as Danforth describes on page 94. Abby and Parris also show this characteristic in the early acts because when they work as a whole to retain the idea of witchcraft in everyone's minds, they are making a decision to be totally with the ideas of the existence of witchcraft. Together, they push to eliminate the witches and represent McCarthy in a sense that when they are working as a pair, they are both totally fighting that witchcraft exists and every accusation is valid. This would relate to the way that almost every accused individual in the McCarthy era was blacklisted, whether or not the accusation was proved entirely true.
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