The Crucible

So, Miller wrote this in part because of the rampant McCarthyism at the time. I remembered looking up wikipedia article about McCarthy just to see if he ever repented or at least found guilty for his lies. Turns out, he died with his conviction, maybe because he had sunk so much of his time, effort, and honor into his words that he could not retract them without looking like a fool to everyone else. So there he went, only the slow unraveling of hysteria that points to the truth. Depressing that so many people's lives had to be ruined in the process.

I finished reading the article with unresolved anger, because I had hope that there will be justice somehow, the victims fairly compensated, the accusers be shamed and punished, y'know, like a neat bow-tied wrapped story. But I guess life is what it is and you cannot will it to be satisfying.

I looked up Salem with trials with the same hope, that somehow bad deeds will not go unpunished. But I learned that only one of the accusers repented, and the victims slowly received their compensation and overdue absolution. So maybe I should be happy that a little justice is served? But a part of me wishes for the sweet schadenfreude followed the shame and punishment to the bad guys. Then again, what can we do, but to hope that this gives us a lesson to empathize and stem our hatred, which is after all the cause to all this. Since both of the events happened a long time ago, the people affected are gone now, finally found peace in their rest. Let's just hope the world wouldn't let this happen again, a pipe dream yeah, but to dream is to fight and to fight is to make the world a little better. Isn't that worth doing