The Crucible Essay: The Crucible as a Warning The witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, in the early seventeenth century were a time of unease and suspicion. Anyone could easily report their neighbor for witchcraft. Some might simply say that the neighbor's spirit attacked him during the night, which no man can prove. However, as a God-fearing community, they could not think of denying the evidence, because denying the existence of Evil means denying the existence of Good, which is God. The most important scene of the play was the second act, the scene three, in which John Proctor gets to talk to his wife Elizabeth one last time. He decides that he will "confess" to the crime of witchcraft, thus avoiding being hanged. However, to accept what he said, the judge also requires him to sign a written confession stating that he confessed to the crime of witchcraft. Judge Danforth would post it on the church door, to use Proctor as an example and convince other people to confess. This upset Proctor greatly, because people would look down on him and darken his name forever. The most important thing for him was to take a stand against the madness of the city, for himself and for God, and use it as a last resort to make people aware of what was happening. This latter stand for righteousness is an example of Proctor's great character and logic. Arthur Miller wrote his play, The Crucible, a story about the Salem witch trials and the resulting panic, as an allegory to show people the folly of the McCarthy hearings. He wrote it as an allegory so that, if rehearsed by McCarthy, he could say, "it's just a play about the Salem witch trials. How do you get this communist idea out of it?" The story illustrates how people react to mass hysteria, created by a person or group of people wanting fame, as they did during the McCarthy hearings. Arthur Miller, as a great visionary, warned us that if we did not become aware of the fact that history repeats itself, our society would be in danger. At the same time, he had to do it in a matter that would not get him arrested, hence the mechanization of the witch trials.