They think to go like saints. I like not to spoil their names.
– Arthur Miller
The Crucible, Act 4. Proctor refuses Danforth’s demand that he name other people he saw with the Devil, including Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty and Martha Corey. While Proctor is willing to lie that he took part in witchcraft to save his own life, he is not prepared to blacken his innocent friends’ good names and lie about them. Using a simile, he says they believe that they are going to their death "like saints." The demand to name names was a feature of the McCarthy political witch hunt of the 1950s. At the time Miller wrote the play America was in the middle of the McCarthyism Red Scare.