The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 Essay examples -- The Crucible Art

The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 The Salem jinxcraft trials of 1692, which resulted in 19 executions, and 150 accusations ofwitchcraft, argon iodin of the historical events almost everyone has heard of. They began when troikayoung girls, Betty Parris, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam began to keep hysterical sounds, after beingdiscovered gentle in forbidden fortune-telling (not dancing naked in the woods) to learn what sortsof work force they would marry. Bettys father, the Reverend Samuel Parris, called in more seniorauthorities to determine if the girls wo was caused by witchcraft. Although Betty was sent awayfairly soon, and did not participate in the trials, the other girls were joined by other young and maturewomen in staging public demonstrations of their affliction when in the presence of accused witches.The events in Salem have been used as a theme in many literary works, including the play by ArthurMiller which we are freeing to read during this unit. They are inte resting to anthropologists becausethey display well-nigh of the characteristics of village witchcraft and some of the features of theEuropean witch craze. Many commentators have seen the Salem witch craze as the last outbreak ofthe European witch craze, transported to sum America. As in African and New Guinea villages, theoriginal accusations in Salem were made against people who, in one way or another, the accusershad reason to fear or resent. Moreover, the first few of the accused fit the definition of marginalpersons, likely to arouse suspicion. However, as in Europe, the accusations spread, and came to cross people not involved in any of Salems local grudges. As in Europe on that point was a belief thatthe accused were in league with the Devil and experts employed scientific ways of diagnosingwitchcraft. Interestingly, during the compound period in Africa, shortly after World War II, there were a number ofwitch finding movements in Africa, which resembled the Salem publiciz e in some ways, and had asimilar status in between the sort of witch hunt found in Europe and the regular African pattern.Typically, in these movements, witch finders would come in from outside a village and claim to beable to rid the village of witchcraft. At this period there was great dislocation, with people movingaround because of establishment employment, a... ...er trusted them. This was likely to be a moreacute line of work in the U.S., since the people who were named by those who cooperated with theCommittee werent hanged and put out of the way, notwithstanding fired and left to try to lead the resistance toMcCarthyism. Namers of names sometimes found themselves with no friends at all, sinceanti-Communists often still failed to trust them. The issue of resisting collaboration with the witchhunters was important enough to Miller that he neutered history, and portrayed the trials as stoppingwhen more people refused to confess when, in fact, a significant increase in con fessions probablyserved to cast some doubt on the validity of individual confessions.Taking liberties with the text is one of the characteristics of the interaction between humans and theirmyths. And a charter myth is certainly what the witch hunts in Europe and Salem have become,though they have more basis in fact than most myths. The stories of the witch hunts are charter mythsfor our time, to be told by feminists, left-wing intellectuals, and lawyers for President Clinton, each taking what he or she needs from the story, adding or subtracting as seems fit.