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

The capital of Oregon Witchcraft Trials of 1692 The Salem witchcraft trials of 1692, which resulted in 19 executions, and 150 accusations ofwitchcraft, ar one of the historical events most everyone has heard of. They began when threeyoung girls, Betty Parris, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam began to have hysterical fits, after beingdiscovered engaging in forbidden fortune-telling (not dancing naked in the woods) to watch what miscellanysof men they would marry. Bettys father, the Reverend Samuel Parris, called in more seniorauthorities to determine if the girls affliction 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 criminate witches.The events in Salem have been used as a theme in many literary works, including the play by Arthurmilling machine which we are going to read during this un it. They are interesting to anthropologists becausethey display some 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 wear outbreak ofthe European witch craze, transported to North 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 toencompass people not involved in any of Salems local grudges. As in Europe there was a belief thatthe accused were in league with the Devil and experts employed scientific ways of diagnosingwitchcraft. Interestingly, during the colonial period in Africa, shortly after World War II, there were a number ofwitch finding movements in Africa, which resembled the Salem ep isode in some ways, and had asimilar status in between the sort of witch hunt found in Europe and the typical African pattern.Typically, in these movements, witch finders would come in from outside a village and subscribe to beable to rid the village of witchcraft. At this period there was great dislocation, with people movingaround because of government employment, a... ...er trusted them. This was likely to be a moreacute problem in the U.S., since the people who were named by those who cooperated with theCommittee werent hanged and put out of the way, just fired and left to try to postulate 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 altered history, and portrayed the trials as stoppingwhen more people refused to confess when, in fact, a significant increase in confessions p robablyserved to tender 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 learn myth is for certain 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, eachtaking what he or she needs from the story, adding or subtracting as seems fit.