The Crucible: Hollywood And The Salem Witch Trails

In the following paragraphs I am going to show how Hollywood portrays the Salem Witch Trails and the 1690’s compared with what actual happened in history and that in the film "The Crucible".

	During the winter of 1691 and 1692 Salem Village had a mass hysteria over the possibility of witchcraft in their village. The movie shows this was brought on after Reverend Parris discovered some girls dancing in the woods. A black slave known as Tituba supposedly led the rite. Tituba was really American Indian Arawak in history though. Of course the village believed the girls were practicing magic but it may have been a result of the girls eating some moldy wheat. The girls suffered from violent fits.

	The first of

History tells about how a neighbor’s pig fell astray into the Nurse family’s yard and Rebecca Nurse yelled at her neighbor. Soon after the neighbor feel ill and died of a

Not all on the same day, on the same gallows like the movie tries to make everyone think. And the only person executed who recited the Lord's Prayer on the gallows was Rev. George Burroughs. Which caused quite a stir since it was generally believed at the time that a witch could not say the Lord's Prayer without making a mistake. They also would not have been hanged while praying, since the condemned were always allowed their last words and prayers. Giles Corey was not executed for refusing to name a witness, as portrayed in the movie. History tells he was accused of witchcraft, and refused to enter a plea, which held up the proceedings, since the law of the time required that the accused enter a plea. He was pressed to death with stones, but the method was used to try to force him to enter a plea so that his trial could proceed. Corey probably realized that if he was tried at all, he would be executed, and his children would be disinherited. The hysteria did not die out as more and more people refused to save themselves by giving false confessions movie states. The opposite was true, more and more people gave false confessions to save themselves, as it became apparent that confession could save one from the noose. What ended the trials was the intervention of Governor William Phips, who had been off in Maine fighting the Indians in King William's War. There