The Salem Witch Trials In The Crucible

In The Crucible how did the people of Salem react under the pressure of the false accusations and convictions of the Salem Witch Trials? The girls in Salem practiced witchcraft and blamed lots of the innocent people that would be tried and penalized, just to take the pressure off themselves. All of the girls are guilty and they got away with it. The mature people of Salem valued justice, this would cost them their lives by trying to disprove the court saying the girls are frauds and Danforth’s decisions were wrong. Arthur Miller makes it clear in The Crucible that justice requires honesty and you will have to be willing to sacrifice to achieve it.

In l993, three young children from a small town in Arkansas were found hogtied, sexually abused and murdered in cold blood; because they were different than everyone else in the town, the teenagers who were falsely accused of this crime lost eighteen years of their lives. The same thing occurred in the play written by Arthur Miller, The Crucible, the people who were different than the social norm were arrested and tried as witches. The teens from Arkansas, and the accused from The Crucible were all profiled by the public and their local justice system because they were different that their expectations of “normal”.

In the book, The Crucible Arthur Miller tries to demonstrate that the Salem Witch Trials and the red scare had a huge impact on the lives of many people. But mainly that there was lots of fear during that time. And people like for example McCarthy saw that as an opportunity to Manipulate people for personal gain. Also, Arthur Miller is showing how these two events really relate to each other and share the same concept.

The Salem Witch Trials - a time where the people of Salem were controlled by Christianity, but their God was nowhere to be found during their suffering and immense fear. Many pieces of literature often try to portray the chaos and seemingly godless times that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, but the most notable piece of literature surrounding the trials is Arthur Miller’s drama, The Crucible. Miller’s characters are all based on people who were actually a part of the Salem Witch Trials and uses details from their lives to contribute to his writing. His dramatized version of the trial accurately describes the hysteria that occurred in the town, and helps lead the reader to a deeper understanding of the witch trials. By showing multiple conflicts in his play, all having to do with religion, relationships, and authority, one begins to question what actually caused the trials in his work and if the trials were truly a search based off of the need to rid the town of all evil. In the end it becomes clear that multiple characters to use the idea of witches as a way to stir up hysteria and fear amongst the people of Salem in order to gain respect and power.

In January of 1692, two girls became ill, the daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris. When their state did not improve the doctor, William Griggs, was called in to help. In June of 1692, the special court of Oyer and Terminer sat in Salem to hear the cases of witchcraft. Presided over by Chief Justice William Stoughton, the court was made up of magistrates and jurors.

The Salem witch trails were in an age of superstition. There were great tensions with the fact that some individuals were changing religions, or they were leaving to gain different religious opinions. Although the Massachusetts colony was under a lot of stress and tension that did not give them the right to hang or burn individuals because they were witches. Now, some of the members of this colony that participated in the Salem witch trial might have had a psychological and issues, but that still did not give them the right to hang innocent people.

A quote by Edward R. Murrow states, “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” During the Red Scare, Senator McCarthy did terrorize a whole nation, and Arthur Miller became a victim of McCarthyism. Miller suffered through accusations of possibly believing in communism; as a result, he wrote a play called The Crucible, in which he used the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 to explain the communist hysteria during the 1950s. Arthur Miller develops an allegory in The Crucible by comparing the Salem Witch Trials to McCarthyism by using ringleaders, persecuted couples, and hypocrisy in the government or legal system.

The Salem Witch Trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The hysteria caused 19 documented hangings at or around Gallows Hill. People were being accused of witchcraft and put to death for it, even without spectral evidence. When the “afflicted girls” accused their first suspects, one made a surprisingly terrifying confession that shook fear into the Puritans to an extreme extent. The Puritans feared the devil more than (modernly) seen as necessary. To have people in their own towns, possibly their neighbor, family member, or friend working for the devil was frightening. Witches, they were the gateway for satan to get into this new world they Puritans had just built. They lived their lives as thinking the devil was always plotting

It all comes back to two young kids they were acting strange they were not them self people believed that they were possessed by the devil they were thought to be witches. how did the devil become associated with witches and witchcraft?

Salem 1692, were witches real, were the people of salem in any danger, or was this all just a simple misunderstanding. There had never been an event so miscalculated in history question still is why had it happened? Back then the word that was feared the most was that one word that should almost dever be said, devil and it had its own name for a reason.

The Salem Witch Trials was a very dark period in our history that occurred in the colony of Salem, Massachusetts. These trials began in February 1692 and ended in May of 1693. There were over two hundred individuals who were accused of practicing witchcraft. Of those two hundred accused, nearly twenty innocent souls were lost. This was one of the most severe cases of mass hysteria in recorded history. There was a great effort exhorted by the Massachusetts General Court to declare a guilty verdict, that the framers of the United States Constitution went to great lengths to never let this type of tragedy occur again; commonly known as the eighth amendment. Remarkably so, some may argue that there were similarities in Salem and the

The Salem Witch Trials began during the spring of 1692 after a group of young girls in Salem Village, MA, said they were being possessed by the devil and accused local women of witchcraft. With chaos running around the village, the special court began taking on cases. Bridget Bishop, the first convicted witch, was hung that June month. Many people of the Salem community had major consequences including death and harrassment. Belief that the devil could give certain humans, or witches, power to harm others in return for their loyalty emerged throughout europe as early as the 14th century. All of this chaos and phenomenon led to a pointing fingers game of who is guilty. Chaos also brought up the question of why it happened, malice, spite, or

In 1692, 19 women were hung and 200 more were accused of witchcraft. All because of the strange actions of 8 young girls. These 8 girls showed signs of being possessed by the Devil. They had seizures, trances, delusions and extreme illness unexpectedly. Fear of being killed by the Indians and worry that there was not enough food and water put the level of tension at a new high for the villages, spread this hysteria faster than wildfire.

“Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it,” said George Santayana. If this is true, then why have we continued to repeat something like the Salem Witch Trials on more than one occasion, including the recent uproar of sexual assault accusations? Although The Crucible and modern day accusations of sexual assault differ in the ways that these assault accusations are in modern times and they are also on something that is not related to religious beliefs, they ultimately have more in common, like how evidence was and is shaky for some cases, all accusations were started by a domino effect, and reputations were ultimately ruined even if the accused were proven innocent eventually.

These days, dressing up like a witch for Halloween is very normal. The year was 1962 when Salem Massachusetts was forever cemented in history because of the Salem witch trials. People accused of witch craft were imprisoned or hung and in one occasion a person was pressed to death. I can only imagine what the people of Salem were going through those days. There was a fear in the entire town because you couldn’t trust anyone. It became neighbor against neighbor as the small town was torn apart and people didn’t know who to trust. One of the most important persons from these times was Cotton Mather. He was an accomplished author, researcher, and preacher who worker under his father at Boston’s North Church. In “From the Wonders of the Invisible World” Mather writes about the Salem Witch Trials and what happened when some people recanted their testimony of being witches.