Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, set in 1692, is based on the historical events surrounding the witch trials in Salem. This essay deals with the failure of the justice system in Salem, Massachusetts. Justice is meant to be based on the inherent principle that everybody is innocent until proven guilty and those found guilty having to be made to pay for their crimes. Arthur Miller demonstrates with his play that there is a thin line between justice and injustice, which can easily lead to hatred, greed, fear, envy and personal vengeance. During the witch trials, eighteen innocent men and women were hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem and this tragedy occurred as a consequence of injustice. The whole breakdown started with young girls dancing in the dark wood, which was considered, by the Puritans as the devil's last dominion. This action was followed by a chain reaction of happenings. Pretended sickness and lies were covering the following actions, fear of justice drove the young girls into a path of madness. When Putnam states, „She cannot bear to hear the Lord’s name that’s a sure sign of witchcraft,” he enforces the idea of witchcraft existing in Salem and in addition to that, Abigail´s scapegoating of Tituba laid the foundation of the witch trials and the first accusation is declared as the following madness and hysteria breaks free. Arthur Miller wrote the Crucible in the 1950´s during the time of the “red scare” and anti-communist concerns of the McCarthy-era. Arthur Miller linked the Crucible to the situation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which investigated against communistic ties. He believed that both events were based on accusation, lacking hard proof and evidence. The witch trials deal with the supernatural and the McCarthyism with disloyalty to the state and fear of the growing power of communism in the United States. The Crucible is considered as an allegory for the intolerance of McCarthyism. Arthur Miller even used the title as a metaphor for the anti-communists craze of America´s red scare, in as much as him portraying America itself as having become became a Crucible, where everybody without exception was afraid of unfounded accusations being leveled at them. Arthur Miller did not describe the Salem witch hunts accurately, and in fact, most of the Crucible is fiction, but the historical context is kept and only modified. The theocracy which ruled America in 1692 was large and distributed, but Arthur Miller converted the power of the court into two main authorities in the play, Danforth and Reverend Hale. Both of them had dedicated their lives to the church and against evil. The point of a trial i