Tension in Witch's Money
In John Collier's "Witch's Money," the stranger who suddenly appears in a remote mountain village in Spain is initially seen by Foiral as an unwelcome madman. Certainly his surrealist description of the landscape must seem a symptom of insanity to one unfamiliar with the trends of modern art. Once he offers a nice sum of money to buy Foiral's house, however, the stranger is treated with a new attitude. He is still not completely accepted by the community that he has moved into, but he does wield a new type of power simply because only he can produce cash from paper billets. With his magic cheques, though, the stranger creates a tension that grows into an economic struggle between himself and his community. Even worse, the stranger unknowingly creates a conflict among the natives of the town who have been a united group. Ultimately, because of the power that the "witch's" money brings into this community, the people of the town -- once happy and content -- are destroyed, and so is the community as a whole. Despite his unconventional art, this stranger is a misbegotten missionary for the decadent values of Western civilization, and with his money he brings the disease of capitalism to the innocent village.
One of the first signs of a struggle between the stranger and the community arises when the villagers voice their suspicions about him. They seem to think that the stranger is fabricating details in order to hide a secret perhaps. For example, Arago points out that the stranger claims to have "[come] from Paris" but also "that he was an American" (67). The fact that the stranger has no relations adds to the town's suspicions. More importantly, though, Foiral and the town are skeptical about t...
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...e to him'" (75).
Thus, at the end of the story the townsfolk laugh at Guis as they march to the bank to demand their money. Guis, they believe, has nothing while they have a remarkable treasure in cheques. Little do they know that disaster awaits when they demand payment for their blank cheques. When their demand is refused, their little town will no longer be happy and content. Moreover, their attempt to cash the cheques will lead to the discovery of the artist's murder and the ruin of the village. The doors of prison will swing shut upon them as quickly as the doors of the bank do. But in reality the village has already been ruined, its innocence destroyed by the capitalistic power of witch's money.
Works Cited
Collier, John. "Witch's Money." 1939. Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine. New York: Dell, 1958. 61-75.
Rosenthal. Bernard. Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. Cambridge Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
I had been in the village for all but a week when I realized there was something... wrong. There seemed to be an underlying atmosphere of fear and animosity. Of course, with my wide-eyed, innocent thinking at the time, I assumed the presence of Satan had damaged the townspeople 's trust of one another. Again, I blissfully accepted this, and I was wrong.
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.
Aronson, Marc. Witch-hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials. New York: Atheneum for Young Readers, 2003. Print.
“The Wonders of the Invisible World”, written by Cotton Mather, is an account of the Salem Witch Trials. He retells information that has been passed down to him without actually being present at the trial and simultaneously explains his theory to why witches were suddenly emerging in Salem, Massachusetts. There were quite a few holes in the Salem Witch Trials, especially regarding whether or not these events occurred the way they are said to. Mather’s book shows us how intense the Puritan ideals were, attaching anything out of the ordinary to a higher power and in doing this shows the flaws of the religion which caused to Salem Witch Trials.
Melnick, Jeffrey. "The Night Witch Did It": Villainy and Narrative in the Leo Frank Case. American Literary History, Vol. 12, No. 1/2 (Spring - Summer, 2000), pp. 113-129
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In many cultures the word "beauty" is plastered across tabloids and televisions with little thought given to the true nature of the
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The concept of beauty can be hard to define, as it is an ever-evolving notion. What people perceive as beauty has varied through time, across cultures (Fallon 1990) and can also vary based on individuals. To a culture, beauty can be its customs and traditions, and to an individual it can include physical appearance (outer beauty) or personality (inner beauty). However the word beauty can also defer according to gender, Ambrose Bierce (1958) once wrote, “To men, a man is but a mind. Who cares what face he carries or what he wears? But a woman’s body is the woman.” Despite the societal changes achieved since Bierce’s time, this statement still holds true. Attractiveness is a prerequisite for femininity but not for masculinity (Freedman, 1986).
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