ociation, one must find a common ground which all assume is guilty. In McCarthy’s case it was communism. In The Crucible, clearly the subject which one associated guilt with was witchcraft. For example, Abigail’s increasingly questionable reputation in light of her unexplained firing threatened Parris’s tenuous hold on power and authority in the community. Abigail was easily able to bring forth the conviction of Elizabeth Proctor using this same method also. Abigail was associated with witchcraft; therefore by pointing her finger at Elizabeth, relating her also to it, she not only ruined her reputation but also almost brought forth her death. Guilt by association is one of the ways private, moral behavior could be regulated. This point is made in the text when Proctor interrupts Hale about his wife Elizabeth’s innocence, “ If she is innocent! Why do you never wonder if Paris be innocent, or Abigail? Is the accuser always holy now?”(Miller). This is Proctor’s attempt at showing the hypocrisy inherent in the court proceedings. The problem with this and other cases of guilt by association is an individual is pressured to govern his or her private relationships with accordance to public opinion and public law. Thus to solidify one’s good name, it becomes necessary to publicly condemn the “wrongdoing” of others. A historical example is the Napoleonic Code where the idea is to assume one is guilty until proven otherwise. In some cases, this method was highly effective because it put the weight of the case on the defendant, not the court. However that allows a degree of laziness on the court’s part in actually figuring out the truth. In case 40 of the Schatz 4McCarthy Hearings he states, “ I do not have much information on this except the general statement of agency (unidentified) that there is nothing in the files to disprove his Communist connections”(&#...
