The Crucible Comparison

Distinction Between The Crucible and The Phantom Slasher of Taiwan In 1956, there was a time when the people in Northwest Taiwan feared anyone who came close to them or their children, due to the slashing that would occur to people. This was known as The Phantom Slasher of Taiwan. It was a span of mass hysteria that went on for a short time until the truth came out. Parents would go to the police and say that their child had mysterious cuts on various areas of their bodies. It was not a very big cut, but it was noticeable enough to make the parents go to the police. Once one person went, many other people would end up going to the police as well. Soon enough, people would go and create lies of the happenings. In the end, all 21 cases were
It only makes sense that these two semi-relevant pieces relate to communism due to their time periods. The Phantom Slasher story was only a few years after the Second Red Scare and The Crucible is an allegory for the First Red Scare. In Norman Jacobs writing about the Phantom Slasher, he said "... this government has been at war with the mainland People's Republic of China since 1949"(Norman 327). This means that Taiwan had been at war with the Communist since 1949 and was still very cautious of anyone, fearing that it could be the communist who wanted to take over and ruin their society. Anything that had transpired at the time would have had people accusing the communist, whether it really was them or not. The Crucible is an allegory for the First Red Scare because Arthur Miller, the Author, had lived through that time period. Arthur had connected the writings of the The Crucible to the First Red Scare as a way to describe the appalling human history that had once taken place(Miller 8). During the First Red Scare the americans had feared anyone that could have possibly been a communist, due to the ending of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. In The Crucible, the townspeople feared one girl, Abigail Williams, because everyone had thought of her as a saint, and they did not want her to accuse them of witchcraft.
Two different cases, in two different centuries, came together to create a widespread uproar to terrify anyone in town or their neighboring areas. They were not nationwide cases, but they were enough to cause sufficient damage to people. Some people were killed, while others were sent to jail, and some just had created lies to add onto the hysteria. Communism and old superstitions were both represented through newspapers to show the stories of mass hysteria in the contents of The Crucible and The Phantom Slasher of