Arthur Miller is trying to communicate to the reader that hysteria swept the gentry up as well as ordinary people and fueled the communist hunts in America during the 1950s. For example in the third act of the play when the girls are wiping up hysteria Danforth demands that Mary must ‘confess this power!’ she is meant to have over the girls. The word ‘power’ connotes the idea of control and order which is ironic as it is said in the heat of hysteria.  The exclamatory phrase ‘confess’ is used by Miller to empathize the desperation Danforth has to uphold the law and force a confession, not matter how false out of Mary. But showing Danforth’s desperation brought on by the hysteria brought by the girls, Miller is using Danforth as an allegory to represent the pressure felt by the Judges in 1950s America to gain an accused person confession to maintain the appearance of strength in a society that is slowly crumpling around them.  The situation of the judges during the period of McCarthyism and the judges in Salem during the Witch hunts is the same. Both the judges are swept up in a time were hysteria is over ruling logic and reasoning. By creating this link Miller is communicating the role hysteria had in the slow destruction of logic and reasoning in both Salem during the Witch hunts of 1692, and America during the communist hunts of the 1950s.