The girls who in that fateful final decade of the seventeenth century were bewitched or thought of as being bewitched in Salem Massachusetts were often orphans who had lost one or both parents in the frontier wars. There was for instance Mercy Short who had been abducted from Salem Falls, New Hampshire by Abenaki warriors in 1690. Both her parents and three of her siblings were among the thirty-four villagers killed during that raid. Freed eight months later through ransom Short became a maiden in Salem to a widow named Margaret Thacher. In 1692 after an errand to the Boston jail where some accused witches were being held, Mercy Short fell into fits. She had been "bewitched." But there can be little doubt her imagination was affected by her recent captivity and the horrors she had witnessed. Short gave a testimony to the fanatical Harvard-trained cleric Cotton Mather in which she said she had seen the Devil. He was, she said, "a short and Black Man." But she clarified, he was "not of a Negro, but of a Tawney, or an Indian color."
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The Infamous witch hunt that convulsed the Salem Colony in 1692 and that swept along with them some twenty-four blameless souls. most of them women, most of them killed by hanging, had its beginnings in the false accusation made against Tibuba, an enslaved woman likely of Taino or Carib origin who was described by her neighbors simply as "Indian." Under torture and after beatings Tituba confessed to being a witch. Because she confessed and because she was subsequently coered into accusing others she was spared hanging. But the man who had enslaved her in Barbados, and in whose home she lived in Salem. the Purtian minister Reverend Samuel Parris - he too had been trained at Harvard - now sold her off into a further and likely more brutal slavery. After that second sale Tituba, who had been forced to leave her toddler daughter in the Parris household, disappeared from historical record. When Reverend Parris died twenty-eight years later in 1720 Tituba's daughter was bequeathed to his son Samuel Parris, Jr. and from that moment nothing further is known of the girl except for her name as written in the will of the old man: Violet.

From: Teju Cole: "Tremor," 2023

General
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1952–53, during a period of intense political tension in the United States. Although the play dramatizes the Salem witch trials of 1692–93, it is equally an allegory for Miller’s own time, particularly the anti-communist investigations led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Historical Salem
The real Salem trials unfolded in a Puritan society marked by fear of the devil, rigid religious codes, and social hierarchies. Economic tensions, personal rivalries, and anxieties about land ownership all contributed to the outbreak of accusations.
Miller draws on this history but also reshapes it for dramatic effect:
- Abigail Williams, historically 11, is aged up to a teenager to create sexual tension with John Proctor.
- The months-long series of trials is condensed into a more urgent narrative.
- Several characters are composites, designed to embody broader social forces.
As Miller himself once wrote, he wanted to capture “the larger pattern of moral collapse” rather than a documentary record of events.

McCarthyism and “Witch Hunts”
In the late 1940s and 1950s, many Americans were accused of communist sympathies or subversive activities. Like Salem’s “witches,” the accused were often condemned without evidence. The pressure to “name names” echoes Salem’s demand that suspects implicate others.
Judge Danforth’s warning — “We cannot look to superstitions in this. The Devil is precise” — sounds rational at first, but soon he accepts wild testimony as proof. Similarly, during HUAC hearings, rumor and suspicion were treated as evidence.
Miller himself was summoned before HUAC in 1956. Like John Proctor, who cries, “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life!”, Miller refused to betray his friends and paid the price for maintaining integrity.

Why the Allegory Matters
By linking Puritan Salem with Cold War America, Miller shows how fear can override reason, how authority can manipulate that fear, and how communities can turn on themselves. Abigail, whipping the girls into frenzy, declares: “Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.” Fear silences dissent, both in Salem and in McCarthy-era America.
Yet The Crucible is not only about its own time. It speaks to any society where panic, ideology, or prejudice erodes justice — whether in political witch-hunts, cultural scapegoating, or mass hysteria in the face of crisis.

A Note on Puritanism
Miller presents the Puritan world as rigid and intolerant, but historians caution against oversimplification. Puritans were also deeply committed to faith, family, and community. Recognizing this complexity reminds us that Salem’s tragedy arose not from monsters, but from ordinary people swept up in extraordinary circumstances.