Th Marion Starkey's The Salem Witch Trials Of 1692

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a series of trials held before a magistrate which took place in many parts of Massachusetts, revolving around what was thought to be practice of witchcraft or “Devil’s magic.” Many girls from the town of Salem, Abigail Williams and Betty Parris in particular, falsely accused other townsfolk of possessing them or practicing witchcraft. The government officials of this town believed that the girls were telling the truth about what they claimed to have seen/know and their random outbursts caused by this “demonic possession” or having a spell put on them. This scam led on by a couple of teenage girls ultimately ended up taking the lives of 20 people before it was demanded to stop by higher Massachusetts government officials and the cases were proved as a mistake. Since then, many psychologists, philosophers, and historians have tried to figure out the motive of the teenage girls.

First published in 1949,

In my opinion, I thought that since this book was written as a narrative Although this book is nonfiction and she states in her preface “one thing I want to make clear. This is history, not fiction,” I believe that making it into a narrative took away from the factual information in the book. From the moment when she says “I had let my imagination run wild” in the preface, it makes the reader feel as if what they are reading is not true at all. I understand that by doing this it was to get people to think about how the people were feeling and to dramaticize the story so that the reader could easily imagine the depths of horror these people went through, and it worked. I just think that if many of the conversations are fabricated, that some of the other information must be