The book, Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem , is written by Rosalyn Schanzer about the Salem Witch Trials which began on February 29, 1692. In January 1692, two young girls, 9-year-old Betty Parris and her cousin, 11-year-old Abigail Williams were “having fits.” These fits included acting strangely, hiding beneath and behind the furniture, and speaking in odd ways. Many people said that, according to their religion, witches were fallen angels sent from the Devil from the “Invisible World” to practically torture the people on Earth.The witches trials began in the first place because of people accusing others. Reasons for these accusations are revenge, attention, and misunderstood people. The first reason for the accusations …show more content…
The people of Salem, Massachusetts wanted to do more than repeat the same things everyday. People of Salem Town claimed that a “Rampant fear among the Puritans in the New England village of Salem sparked attacks against anyone who was suspected of witchcraft.” (History.com “Salem Witch Trials”) yet, it is likely most of the people, accused or not, knew that the accused weren’t witches. People have said that the Betty and/or Abigail were just sick and were being pressured to see if they were being bewitched by so called “witches” to be acting like they were and seeing what they saw. More and more accusers, mostly children, were being caught, but still recanted(page 96). As the judges were being rapt(page 70) listeners, they were wasting their time listening to the attention-hungry accusers. Most accusers used “spectral evidence” so they could get away with saying lies that sounded worthy of execution and “Though the respected minister Cotton Mather had warned of the dubious value of spectral evidence, his concerns went largely unheeded during the Salem witch trials.” (History.com”Salem Witch Trials”). The girls fervently(page 65) said that the accused were indeed witches, trying to act believable and they succeeded. The accuser’s “belief in the power of the accused to use their invisible shapes or spectres to torture their victims had sealed the fates of those tried by the Court of Oyer and Terminer.” (Salem Witch Museum “ The 1692 Salem Witch Trials”) and brought sadness to
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Show MoreRichard Godbeer’s ‘The Salem Witch Hunt’ puts into account the proceedings of several accused cases with most of the accused being women and the McCarthyism paranoia that gripped Salem Town. Two of the accused women; Good and Osborne pleaded not guilty but Tituba confessed practicing witchcraft and that there were many more witches in Salem. Her confession opened the doors for further more trials against witches with Governor William Phipps establishing a Special Court of Oyer and Treminern to handle the witchcraft cases. The court’s first case saw a respectable church member; Martha Corey tried and convicted making Salem inhabitants’ paranoia increase with people believing nobody was safe if a church member could be a witch. Legitimacy of evidence produced at court was questionable with spectral evidence be...
In Rosalyn Schanzer’s Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, many people have realized that the witch trials may have started for a variety of reasons. In the witch trials, people started accusing the innocent, saying that they have bewitched either themselves or someone else. The trials took place in the little town of Salem. In Salem, the majority of the citizens had beliefs in the Puritan religion, which is where they believe word for word the bible. Some of the possible reasons as to why the Salem witch trials started could be peer pressure / bribery, illness and/or emotion, and something that happened in the past, for example grudges that people might have.
The Salem Witch Trials began during the spring of 1692 in Salem Village (now Danvers), Massachusetts (Salem Witch Trials, 2014). There were over two hundred people accused of practicing witch craft and nineteen were executed for it. Religion was extremely important to the Puritans, regardless of age, and individual differences were frowned upon (Source 4). Puritans were expected to live by a strict moral code. They believed that all sins deserved a punishment and that if something bad happened such as their neighbor having a sick child or a failed crop, they did not help because it was God’s will. It is important to note, that at this time, the Puritans believed that the Devil gave weak people special, evil powers if they pledged their loyalty to him. These people were called witches (Blumberg, 2007).
As known, the witch trials occurred in the year 1692, and was one of the most devastating events to have ever occurred in Salem, Massachusetts. These events occurred due to the ignorance of many afflicted girls. Many innocent people gave up their lives and protested their innocence of witchcraft. According to the websites, there is little known about the accusers. However, many of the people who aided in the accusing were said to have left Salem. After the events occurred, only one of the afflicted girls and a few other accusers gave a confession pleading for forgiveness. It is still unknown why this event led to such an outrage, but many reasonable speculations are assumed. Throughout each reference, many of the authors explain what happened
In the year 1692, the small farming village of Salem, Massachusetts saw a social phenomenon that would propel the village into the history books: the calamity that was witchcraft. The witch trials were initiated whenever three young girls, Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam were caught performing fortune telling rituals in the woods, trying to gather information on what type of man would be best for them. Soon thereafter, the girls began experiencing hysterical fits, prompting Betty Parris’s father, Reverend Samuel Parris, to call in the authorities to confirm the cause of the girls’ symptoms. ...
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.
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.
The Salem Witch Trials were a series of one wrong accusation after another from a group of young ladies. The Trials were tragic, as so many innocent people were hanged and imprisoned based on the testimonies of several lying children. It all started with a group of girls caught in the woods dancing around a fire and cauldron, but instead of these girls taking the blame, they passed it on to innocent bystanders.
The witch trial in Salem, Massachusetts that occurred in February 1692 to May 1693, were there version of accusations based on malicious intentions. Such as the world is today by branding individuals with racism or those coming from a particular area with poverty, by labeling them as criminals and murderers. The price of those who were accused of being witches had serious repercussions, such as losing their wealth, their social profile crumbling in front of their eyes, and worst of all was death by hanging. During the Salem witch trials women had less authority during the Puritan society, they were devalued and were seen as human sacrifices in order to keep harmony in the community. Their lack of authority occurred because many men felt that God was viewed as male, did not want females to established feminine authority that could challenge the faith they followed or the principles they follow since birth.
Have you ever read the Salem Witch Trial? The Salem Witch Trial is based on a
The period of the Salem Witch Trials was a terrible point in American history. Twenty people died during the trials, they could’ve been saved if it wasn’t for the vengeful accusers just out for revenge, or even just a laugh. Many women were falsely accused of witchcraft during the late 1600s, the most memorable of them being Tituba Indian and Sarah Good. A famous group of accusers, the afflicted girls, also played a large role in the start of witchcraft.
The witchcraft hysteria started when Martha Goodwin followed by her siblings began to have what was considered to be strange behavior. A woman named Annie Glover was arrested and later hung for bewitching the girls. A couple years later in 1692 three more girls were caught acting strangely. The parents of these girls began to worry and when the doctor could not pinpoint an explanation, it was said that the girls’ strange behaviors were due to witchcraft. The Puritan faith being so religious so the satanic and voodoo nature of witchcraft was a logical reason for the odd behaviors. Annie was an Irish-Catholic server, she was a more fitting for the witchcraft because not only was she not a Puritan, but a woman without a man to look over her. Some would say that the hysteria was due to the Puritans of the Salem Town and Salem Village having conflicts with each other but conflicts with the Indians around them. Even
When one evokes The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the image that comes to most peoples minds are that of witches with pointed hats riding broomsticks. This is not helped by the current town of Salem, Massachusetts, which profits from the hundreds of thousands of tourists a year by mythologizing the trials and those who were participants. While there have been countless books, papers, essays, and dissertations done on this subject, there never seems to be a shortage in curiosity from historians on these events. Thus, we have Bernard Rosenthal's book, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692, another entry in the historiographical landscape of the Salem Witch Trials. This book, however, is different from most that precede it in that it does not focus on one single aspect, character, or event; rather Rosenthal tells the story of Salem in 1692 as a narrative, piecing together information principally from primary documents, while commenting on others ideas and assessments. By doing so, the audience sees that there is much more to the individual stories within the trials, and chips away at the mythology that has pervaded the subject since its happening. Instead of a typical thesis, Rosenthal writes the book as he sees the events fold out through the primary documents, so the book becomes more of an account of what happened according to primary sources in 1692 rather than a retelling under a new light.
Although witch trials were not uncommon in Puritanical New England, none had reached such epidemic proportions as Salem. In 1691 the mass hysteria began when several young girls dabbled in witchcraft and began acting strange. When villagers took notice the girls were seriously questioned and so they began naming people, mainly woman, who had supposedly bewitched them (Boyer, p66). Several other who had been accused were woman displayed ‘unfeminine’ behavior and those who
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. There 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. Soon prisons were filled with more than 150 men and women from towns surrounding Salem.