How did miller use gossip to implicate the whole town in the events of the witch trials?

Clearly the trials are begun by the wagging of tongues after the girls are found in the woods, but gossip certainly has a more enduring role. Reputations in Salem are made or broken based on slander and rumor, and reputation was a man's only defense against accusation - and even that often failed to correct aspersions. But gossip also proves to be a destructive force even in the hands of the good and unwitting, taking on a life of its own - Giles Corey, for instance, condemns his own wife simply by a slip of the tongue.

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