You are a Witch
The Salem Witch Trials were horrendous days in which a reasonable amount of people died, and it certainly caused a severe impact in the society of Massachusetts Bay. The nonsensical Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts Bay were mostly due to the strong connections that the colonizers had with regard to the bible that leaded them to hang and jail innocent people. In fact, plenty of people felt that Satan was behind all the witchery that was going on, and some other thought that Satan was inducing evilness into people; especially in old women. Women were more likely to be considered to be witches because they were expected to be more docile and mentally weaker, which made them more susceptible to be tempted by the devil. For this
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In fact, there were women who started blaming others of witchery, and those were the “Afflicted girls,” and there were women the first people who were accused of witchcraft. The first accused women were Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne, and although all of them denied the fact of being witches at the beginning; it was Tituba who ended up confessing that she was a witch. As a matter of a point, Tituba confessed that there were more witches than just her, and it was her confession that started the hunting. Tituba was officially the first who declared to be a witch, and yet she was never hanged. Since Tituba’s confession, plenty of women were accused of practicing witchery, and plenty of them were hanged. Ironically, it was the accusation of a woman who stopped the Salem Witch Trials, but that woman was not a simple woman or a lower status woman; it was the Governor Phipps’s wife. The “afflicted girls” had been blaming lower class women, who technically nobody cared about, but when the girls accused Governor Phipps’s wife, the Salem Witch trials were somehow moved to a higher court, in which spectral evidence was no longer accepted as
In “We Aren’t Superstitious”, by Stephen Vincent Benet, the theme of accusation supports the superstitions for the Salem Witch Trials. Throughout the entire story, accusations are thrown left and right; Arguing on who is a witch and who isn’t. When Tituba arrived from the West Indies towards the beginning of the story, nobody could predict the mayhem she would unfold. The queer and interesting stories she told Elizabeth Parris later spread into the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Now, one doesn't know if this was part of her “evil voodoo-witch plan” or aimlessly come across, but it was catastrophic. The first individual to be accused of witchery was Sarah Good, who later was followed by Sarah Osborne. They were both accused of witchery because of their low social classes. Sarah Good was known as a whore and a beggar, while Sarah Osborne was married to a lower social class and was a horrible Christian. This accusation of the lower class portrays a lot of what happens today in the real world.
There were a number of religious factors that contributed to the Salem Witch trials but most of the people in Massachusetts during the trials were Puritans. The Puritan lifestyle was influenced by the church and Christian beliefs. Puritans believed that God expected them to live according to the scriptures and to set a good example so the people that remained in England would change their sinful ways. Puritans were expected to follow a strict moral code and anything other than that was considered a sin and deserved to be punished. When difficulties in the community began the blame was on the Devil and the witches.
In the book Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, Rosalyn Schanzer describes what happens all because two girls fell ill. When Betty and Abigail started having fits, a doctor diagnosed them as bewitched. Almost immediately they accused the first witch, their slave Tituba. From there all the accusations started pouring out, Ann Putnam Jr., a friend of Betty and Abigail, became “afflicted” as well as multiple others, and soon the jails were overflowing. The first “witch” was hanged on June 10, and the last “witches/wizards” were hanged on September 22. The most likely reasons for the accusations were a thirst for revenge, boredom, and peer/parental pressure.
The Salem witch craft trials are the most learned about and notable of Europe's and North America's witch hunts. Its notoriety and fame comes from the horrendous amount of people that were not only involved, but killed in the witch hunt and that it took place in the late 1700's being one of the last of all witch hunts. The witch craft crises blew out of control for several reasons. Firstly, Salem town was facing hard economic times along with disease and famine making it plausible that the only explanation of the town's despoilment was because of witches and the devil. As well, with the stimulation of the idea of witch's from specific constituents of the town and adolescent boredom the idea of causing entertainment among the town was an ever intriguing way of passing time.
Analysis and Comparison of the Witch Trials In modern times, the most infamous witch trials are the one that occurred in Salem. These specific witch trials are known for the unjust killings of several accused women and men. The Salem witch trials of 1692, is a big portion of what people refer to, when they want to analyze how Puritan life was during the colonial period. According to ‘Salem Witch Trials’, “The witch trials are often taken as a lens to view the whole Puritan period in New England and to serve as an example of religious prejudice…”
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”, Exodus 22:18. In 1692 , in Salem Massachusetts , the Puritans believed everything in the bible, they also believed in witches and that witches should not be able to live.There were at least 3 causes for the Salem witch trial hysteria. There are: age, gender, and marital status , lying girls, and a divided town.
Salem 1692, two girls ,Betty Parris, age nine, and her eleven year old cousin Abigail Williams, had a dream. They wanted to be the best actors in the village. They worked very hard to do that and they got twenty people killed. Betty and Abigail were Puritans and they are not supposed to lie or they would end up with the devil in the afterlife, but it seemed like they didn’t care. That’s why we ask, why were people blaming the innocent for being witches in Salem, 1692? The Salem Witch Trials were caused by two poor, young girls who acted possessed. There were also other people who took the risk of lying and accused other people. Most of the accusers were under the age of twenty and woman. The little girls caused the Salem Witch Trials hysteria by pretending to be possessed. Most of the accusers were poor and lived in the western part of the town.
The Salem Witch trials were when hundreds of citizens of Salem, Massachusetts were put on trial for devil-worship or witchcraft and more than 20 were executed in 1692. This is an example of mass religion paranoia. The whole ordeal began in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris. People soon began to notice strange behavior from Parris’s slave, Tituba, and his daughters. Many claimed to have seen Parris’s daughters doing back magic dances in the woods, and fall to the floor screaming hysterically. Not so long after, this strange behavior began to spread across Salem.
During the time of the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, more than twenty people died an innocent death. All of those innocent people were accused of one thing, witchcraft. During 1692, in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts many terrible events happened. A group of Puritans lived in Salem during this time. They had come from England, where they were prosecuted because of their religious beliefs. They chose to come live in America and choose their own way to live. They were very strict people, who did not like to act different from others. They were also very simple people who devoted most of their lives to God. Men hunted for food and were ministers. Women worked at home doing chores like sewing, cooking, cleaning, and making clothes. The Puritans were also very superstitious. They believed that the devil would cause people to do bad things on earth by using the people who worshiped him. Witches sent out their specters and harmed others. Puritans believed by putting heavy chains on a witch, that it would hold down their specter. Puritans also believed that by hanging a witch, all the people the witch cast a spell on would be healed. Hysteria took over the town and caused them to believe that their neighbors were practicing witchcraft. If there was a wind storm and a fence was knocked down, people believed that their neighbors used witchcraft to do it. Everyone from ordinary people to the governor’s wife was accused of witchcraft. Even a pregnant woman and the most perfect puritan woman were accused. No one in the small town was safe. As one can see, the chaotic Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were caused by superstition, the strict puritan lifestyle, religious beliefs, and hysteria.
First, the Puritan values and expectations were strict, and those who had defied their teachings would have been at a much higher chance of being accused as a witch. Second, economic struggles within Salem Town and Village had further divided the two, by crop failure and livestock death. Ultimately causing economic damages. Third, personal opinions and disputes had contributed to the trials and accusations. The law system was unfair during the trials, so when or if someone was accused the court would side with the accuser, unless of course, they were a witch themselves. In conclusion, the people who died and who were accused of witchcraft were not really witches, Salem and it’s inhabitants were under the influence of mass hysteria, personal beliefs and grudges that eventually became the chaos of the Salem witch hunts of
The Salem Witchcraft Hysteria was a product of women’s search for power. This claim is supported by Lyle Koehler, from A Search for Power: The “weaker sex” in seventeenth-century New England (University of Illinois, 1980), explained and argues why this is true. Koehler mentions that the women were in search for more power and respect and power equality. She mentioned that the men were afraid of witches because they felt they were superior to them which brought in the question of who really was the superior gender. But really, the women accused others as being witches so as to gain more power from men. Basically, this showed that the women were not afraid of controlling or taking the power from men. In the seventeenth century, the men had power; so therefore, women did anything and would do anything to gain more power than the men. In puritan society, the only women with any significant power were mothers. They had powers not only in their homes but also in the public as long as they accused people of being witches. They also implicated others to achieve this power. An example that Koehler gave would be sociologist Dodd Bogart’s conclusion that “demon or witch charges are attempt to restore “self-worth, social recognition, social acceptance, social status and other related social rewards” is pertinent to the Salem village situation.
The Salem Witch Trials occurred because “three women were out in jail, because of witchcraft, and then paranoia spread throughout Salem” (Blumberg). In the Salem Village, “Betty Paris became sick, on February of 1692, and she contorted in pain and complained of fever” (Linder). The conspiracy of “witchcraft increased when play mates of Betty, Ann Putnam, Mercy, and Mary began to exhibit the same unusual behavior” (Linder). “The first to be accused were Tituba, a Barbados slave who was thought to have cursed the girls, Sarah Good, a beggar and social misfit, and Sarah Osborn, an old lady that hadn’t attended church in a year” (Linder). According to Linder, Tituba was the first to admit to being a witch, saying that she signed Satan’s book to work for him. The judges, Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, “executed Giles Corey because he refused to stand trial and afterwards eight more people were executed and that ended the Witch Trials in Salem”
Seventeen others died in prison and the lives of many were irrevocably changed. To better understand the events of the Salem witch trials, it is necessary to understand the time period in which the accusations of witchcraft occurred. These were the ordinary stresses of 17th-century life in Massachusetts Bay Colony. A strong belief in the devil, factions among Salem Village fanatics, and rivalry with nearby Salem Town all played a part in the stress. There was also a recent small pox epidemic and the threat of an attack by warring tribes created a fertile ground for fear and suspicion.
The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were the largest outbreak of witch hunting in colonial New England up to that time. Although it was the largest outbreak, it was not something that was new. Witch-hunting had been a part of colonial New England since the formation of the colonies. Between the years 1648 to 1663, approximately 15 witches were executed. During the winter of 1692 to February of 1693, approximately 150 citizens were accused of being witches and about 25 of those died, either by hanging or while in custody. There is no one clear-cut answer to explain why this plague of accusations happened but rather several that must be examined and tied together. First, at the same time the trials took place, King William's War was raging in present day Maine between the colonists and the Wabanaki Indians with the help of the French. Within this war, many brutal massacres took place on both sides, leaving orphaned children due to the war that had endured very traumatic experiences. Second, many of the witch accusations were based on spectral evidence, most of which were encounters of the accused appearing before the victim and "hurting" them. There were rampant "visions" among the colonies' citizens, which can only be explained as hallucinations due to psychological or medical conditions by virtue of disease, or poisoning.
In the end, the Salem Witch Trials didn’t have a very good effect on anyone in Salem. These trials also left a major imprint on Salem.