s wandering from house to house; abandoned cattle bellow on the highroads, the stink of rotting crops hangs everywhere..."(137) Salem was turning into a ghost town. With Abigail controlling the community, the church no longer getting the whole town to prayer, and an unjust legal system, it is natural that the people were in a state of total chaos. Which was simpler with McCarthy controlling Congress "McCarthy and his type were the best friends of the Soviet Union had in America, for they did much more to disrupt American domestic tranquility …than communists could ever hope to do,"(Oakley 221). The greater enemy is not the devil or communist but those out to stop them. The social breakdown in Salem and 1950s America was the major factor in the tragedy that effected the lives of many innocent people. There was more than one tragedy in The Crucible. The first was the murdering of many innocent people, the second was that a community that was once very close had been broken apart, and third the slander of many innocent people that inspired the play. ...
