Salem witch trials

what main 3 ppl died in the end of the play, "the crucible" which deals w/ the salem witch trials

what was happening to america at the time the play was written? did it have anythng to do w/ mccarthyism?

Mass hysteria.  Witchcraft and pagan practices existed in Christian Europe for many centuries as a relic of both Celtic and Germanic tribal cultures.  This coexisted with the Church, although rarely acknowledged and not condoned by it.

I am not an expert on this, but the practice of sorcery and witchcraft began to be taken very seriously in the fifteenth century.  That is when the Papacy and the Dominicans began to organize the active Inquisition into Heretical and Satanic practices.  The Inquisition had been an institution for some time (the Templars being prosecuted [and persecuted] under the "Holy Office").  That was from 1307 until they were pretty much eviscerated in some kingdoms.

The instruction manual on witchcraft became the Maleus Malefacorum which is Latin for the Hammer of Evildoers and was composed in the later XV c.

Hysteria over this became a phenomenon late in the XVI c. and was particularly viscious in Germany and Bohemia.  It lasted with decreasing intensity through much of the XVIIc., and also was found in Scotland as well as France and even Scandinavia.  Spain and Italy as well, but the Inquisition was more geared toward heresy in those lands.

England had it's time from about the mid XVII c. up until around 1700 or so, but not to the degree or ferocity of the German/Bohemian witchcraze.  Of course, English colonies were populated by Englishmen, and culture follows culture, especially early on.  The Salem trials were in the 1690s I think.

Free enquiry and scientific thought from the later XVII c. through the Enlightenment caused it to die out.

Ridiculous really.  But people thought differently then.  I wonder what the Moslems would have thought of it.