The Salem witch trials and the situation at Guantanamo Bay are similar as well as different. Both involve torture, unfairness, false accusations and inconclusive outcomes. They violate human rights and the justice process. The Salem witch trials revolve around the fear of neighbors and outsiders and the Guantanamo Bay situation revolves around the fear of terrorism. Although the fears are very different, the results are similar. One way they are similar is they both operated by fear. During the Salem witch trials everyone is in fear so they hang people with no evidence. The reason Guantanamo Bay became a prison was to detain terrorist after 9/11. People were scared of terrorist so they wanted them taken care of any way possible. Therefore, they allowed the U.S. Government to lock people up with no evidence. In both these situations spectral …show more content…
evidence was used and the logic that people are guilty until proven innocent. Another way the situations are similar is they both use torture to get the accused to say what they want. They way they used torture during the Salem witch trials is they would press, which is putting heavy rocks on a person, until they would confess. In the play The Crucible Giles was pressed to confess and ended up being crushed by the rocks instead of confessing. The prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are tortured many ways to get information. One way is they are water boarded. This is so that the military can gain intel on terrorist activities. Another way the two are similar is that in both cases no legal defences are able to be heard. During the Salem witch trials the accused were told to either confess or be hanged. They never had a chance to defend themselves. In Guantanamo Bay the prisoners are considered guilty of terrorism and can be held there indefinitely with no chance of trial. This goes against all of the Geneva Conventions. On the other hand there are some difference between The Salem Witch Trials and Guantanamo Bay.
For instance in the witch trials the accused were brought to court and unfairly tried in court. This is different from the situation in Guantanamo Bay. Suspected terrorist are placed in jail instantly, and may never have the chance to be tried. Another way they are different is that it was publicly announced when someone went to jail for being a witch while in Guantanamo Bay people are taken from around the world and no one knows where they go and they are just missing and end up in Guantanamo Bay. A person who goes to Guantanamo has no contact with the outside world and their family may never know what happened to their loved ones. Much has changed since the salem witch trials though. In Guantanamo Bay people are not told to confess or be killed. They are in jail and told to give up information or they could be tortured and not killed. During the witch trials, if they confessed to being a witch or accused others, they were put in jail or even released. If they said they were not guilty they were hung, without
evidence. As you can see, there are many similarities in the violations of the legal process and human rights between the Salem witch trials and the situation at Guantanamo Bay. But the situation at Guantanamo Bay is better than the Salem witch trials.
The Salem Witch Trials are some of the most well known trials in American history. For over a year, twenty people most of which were women, were sent to be executed because they were prosecuted of performing witchcraft.
During the Salem Witch Trials people were hanged for claims made against them because hysteria caused many claims of people being witches. This compares to the hysteria surrounding UFOs where the hysteria is just believing they seen them and no one dies. One example in the book is when Giles Corey was accused and didn't want to confess so he got pressed to death meanwhile people who are accused of being aliens don't die and is instead taken as a joke. This death during the Salem Witch Trials was one of many meanwhile they aren't any related deaths that were cause by the hysteria of UFO sightings.
The McCarthy era is very similar to the Salem Witch trials. They are both similar, because they both dealt with hysteria. Hysteria is an uncontrollable fear or outburst of emotion. Both things had to do with people accusing each other of people being communist, and people being witches.
The Salem Witch trial and the Holocaust were very similar event because the people in both of these event were oppressed and were treated under harsh conditions, but the people that were affected by the Salem Witch trials were in better conditions than the people living during the Holocaust and the concentration camps. During the Salem Witch trials, the people involved it were given proper living conditions, while in the Holocaust, they were unbearable for most people.
More than two hundred years have gone by since the discovery of the new world. People of with all types of backgrounds and problems came flocking over the ocean to start anew. Jamestown, Virginia and Salem, Massachusetts, were very early settlements, and perhaps two of the most known names of colonies. Jamestown was known for many things, including Bacon’s Rebellion. And Salem was known for one reason, the Salem Witch Trials. These two pieces of history reflect the tensions of the unstable society and of their beliefs.
The Salem witch trials and the story of Joseph McCarthy are very similar; they both accused innocent people of doing things that were “bad” at the time. The Salem Witch trials were persecutions of men and woman on account of performing witchcraft. Two girls accused a woman of doing witchcraft and then the accusations continued, people accused other people to relieve their own punishment in a last ditch effort to save their lives, but it was in vein. After the witch trials were over “19 had been killed and an elderly man pressed to death under heavy stones”(Linder). “Some accused of witch craft were burned at the stake all in the name of justice”(Brown). Others were finally let out of jail after being in imprisonment for months at a time. Joseph McCarthy was the U.S senator for the state of Wyoming from 1947-1957, the year that he died. McCarthy became the most visible face in public during the time of the cold war in America. “McCarthy pursued unnecessary investigations, imprisonments and unprovoked acts to those who were being accused of being a communist”(Glitterrich). The term McC...
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.
The Salem Trials took place between the 10th of June and the 22nd of 1692 and in this time nineteen people. In addition to this one man was pressed to death and over 150 people where sent to jail where four adult and one infant died. Although when compared to other witch-hunts in the Western world, it was ‘a small incident in the history of a great superstition,’ but has never lost its grip on our imagination’ . It’s because of this that over the last three centuries many historians have analysed the remaining records of the trials in order to work out what the causes and events were that led to them.
Whether you would like to believe it or not our country has some very dark history ranging from the use of children in factory’s, to keeping and enslaving human beings. Although there is a more disturbing and more sinister part of our history. We refer to this as the Salem witch trials occurring in Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. You might have heard of this from your history class, more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft and therefore killed. Although it spanned form a very short period of time it’s still a very important and deep part of our history. Did these people actually deserve their punishment for the actions taken around this time was every measure taken and inspected in these trials?
The justice system is designed to protect the people that it serves but during the trials the accused witch had two choices, death or imprisonment.
...in their family to become sick and possibly die. Many people were accused of witchcraft. More than twenty people died all together. One person was flattened to death because he was accused of witchcraft. When people were accused they had to go to jail, which the conditions were terrible. Then, they had to get a trial from the Court of Oyer and Terminer. After an accused witch had their trial, and went to jail, they would be carted off to Gallows Hill. This was the hill where all the witches were hanged. After a witch was hanged, later that night, their family would usually take the body down and give it a proper burial. The Salem Witchcraft Trials were one of the most terrible times in the history of America. As you can see the chaotic Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were caused by superstition, the strict puritan lifestyle, religious beliefs, and hysteria.
Events have played out in history that made people realize the inhumane acts of people and the Salem witch trials and the McCarthy era were two of them. The Salem witch trials in 1692 were almost 260 years before the McCarthy “witch hunts” in the 1950s yet there are similarities between them. The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller in 1953, is about the Salem witch trials and is an allegory to the practicing of McCarthyism during the Second Red Scare in the United States, which Miller was a victim of. Although there may be differences between “The Crucible” and McCarthyism, ultimately the anger, lack of evidence, and the people were alike in both events.
According to Jones, modern estimates suggest perhaps 100,000 trials took place between 1450 and 1750, with an estimated execution total ranging between 40,000 and 50,000. This death toll was so great because capital punishment was the most popular and harshest punishment for being accused of witchcraft. Fear of the unknown was used to justify the Puritans contradictive actions of execution. Witch trials were popular in this time period because of religious influences, manipulation through fear, and the frightening aspects of witchcraft.
In the modern day it’s hard to believe there’s even still ‘’witch hunts’’ as you can say where a group of people are stereotyped as something without them doing the actual stereotypical thing. We live in a world where blacks are getting shot for no reason when they were just walking down the street unarmed and not harming anyone. Blacks and Latinos are always looked down upon in any shape or form. They could be driving a nice car they get pulled over for suspicion of a stolen car, they can get pulled over in an old broken car and they will get pulled over for suspicion of ‘’criminal activity’’. But if it’s a white person the cops will NOT bat a single eye at them despite being in the same situations as the black. And you know what the problem
The mass hysteria between today’s society and the Salem witch hunt can be compared through Freedom , Religion ,and the killing of innocent victims. Mass hysteria has caused a lot of destruction in society throughout the years. It has brought about a lot of chaos in both Salem as well as the present society. Mass hysteria has brought out a lot of fear in people in both Salem and present society.