What Is The Moral Panic Of The Salem Witch Trials?

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Society throughout time has proven to be a frail and feeble structure that has failed to maintain organization on multiple occasions. People have demonstrated that with just enough chaos and pressure, they will have no qualms with deserting their morals at the sight of adversity. Whether it be creating a witch hunt to better the lives of the poor, or putting fellow American citizens’ in concentration camps based off their Japanese ancestry. There is no boundary that people won’t cross in order to feel safe and justified in their decisions. In Isaac Reed’s article,” Deep culture in action: resignification, synecdoche, and metanarrative in the moral panic of the Salem Witch Trials”, he examines the concept of moral panics as a whole, the history …show more content…

The Salem Witch Trials fits all the sociological elements and basic intuitions that are necessary to develop and establish a moral panic, with the exclusion of mass media (Reed, 2015, para. 10). He begins by addressing the fact that what happened was a disproportionate response, omitting the obvious part where magic and spell casting do not exist (Reed, 2015, para. 11). The panic was driven due to the recent development of America, and the less than favorable results that they had produced. In result it seemed that women were the main target for this assault, especially those who inherited property and challenged the patriarchal structure of Salem (Reed, 2015, para. 33). This was easily obtained due to men being concerned about the evil that was being brought to them, and the women being concerned about possession. This allowed people to not focus on the obvious problem that was directly in front of them, the ruthless murder of innocent people on the off chance they were witches. As time went on, none of the accusations were taken seriously, since all you had to do was take into account the credibility of those who were possessed (Reed, 2015, para. 33). The most vital role in the development of the panic was the desperation of the priests to bring the church back into Salem, and that is exactly what they

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