Analysis Of Rosalyn Schanzer's Witches: The Salem Witch Trials

“The Crucible by Author Miller is a fictional play that retells the historical event of the Salem Witch Trials that took place in a minute puritan village in Massachusetts in 1992. Miller fixates on the revelation of several girls and a slave, Tituba, dancing around in the woods endeavoring to conjure spirits from the dead. To avoid punishment for their demeanor, the girls started to accuse others of the same thing they were guilty of. This finger pointing game was very juvenile and they engendered a community in which everyone feared that everyone was a potential witch. The number of arrests increased and so did the distrust within the community.

Their practice of witchery in the 15th century contained awful things which included devil worship, baby eating, destruction of crops, and even murder (Cheung 539). “The early modern period (1400-1700) became a popular time of where the most witches existed. About 70,000 to 100,000 souls killed for doing work for the devil” (Bio Staff). “Early witches were people who practiced witchcraft— they used magic spells and called upon spirits for help to bring about change. Most witches were thought to be Pagan’s doing the Devil’s work.

She was later taken to jail. This was the start of the Salem Witch Trials. More than one hundred and fifty people were accused falsely of witchcraft. These false accusations brought up executions and tragedy to families all over the

The most acknowledgeable dispute from the play was between the Putnam’s and the Nurse’s. Rebecca Nurse was blamed for the death of all of Ann Putnam’s children, except for one. The events also caused numerous people to be convicted of witchcraft, some of them being executed. Two of the most notable people convicted in the play were John Procter, condemned for adultery and later hung, and Tituba, who confessed, saving her own life.

As their puzzled father ,Samuel Parris, observed the two mysterious little girls creep under chairs and spin around on the ground he pondered where this weird behavior was coming from. In Salem there were two little girls who were envious of the rich, so they made it clear that they could make people tremble in fear if they did not like you or wanted what you had. Everyone in Salem was terrified because there were so many people being accused of witchcraft. 22 people were hanged because the two little girls were pretending to be afflicted. The Salem witch trial Hysteria of 1692 was caused by two poor, young girls who claimed to be afflicted because of jealousy.

The community received an offset of terror when three young girls, 9-year-old Elizabeth (Betty), Parris, 11-year-old Abigail Williams, and Anne Putnam began having fits, including violent contortions and uncontrollable outbursts of screaming. After a local doctor examined them he diagnosed bewitchment, and suddenly other young girls began experiencing similar symptoms. The young girls accused Tituba, a slave, along with Sarah Good, a homeless beggar, and elderly woman Sarah Osborn of bewitching them. The three accused witches were social outcasts

Nathaniel Nguyen The Crucible Arthur Miller English 2 Honors Period 2 Witch Hunting During the years 1692 to 1693, The Salem Witch Trials were a time of great fear and hysteria, as even neighbors would accuse one another of witchcraft just to lower the suspicion that they themselves were witches. Although many people nowadays are very well aware of what happened during this frightful time, most still don’t know how the Salem Witch Trials actually began. The Crucible by Arthur Miller captures the horrific experience of the Salem Witch Trials from their very beginning, to their ending when people began realizing that the entire situation had been a lie from the very start. The main character, John Proctor, may seem to be a normal, middle aged man living in the Puritan town of Salem, but however, he holds a dark secret: he cheated on his wife with a girl named Abigail Williams. What he doesn 't know, is that by cheating with Abigail, he partly started the Salem witch madness; John makes Abigail very envious of his wife, and thus, she begins accusing others of dark sorcery and witchcraft.

It all starts at the very beginning when they start lying about Tituba being a witch and conjuring Ruth Putnams dead sisters. And the group of girls that accuse people of witch trial are lying pretty much the whole play. One doesn’t even know if witches and wizards are real and these girls had all of Salem going crazy thinking everyone is cursed with witchcraft. They did it all to make people lower on the social ladder than they are or to get back at people who have done them wrong. It is established very early in the play that girls are liars when Abby says, “ABIGAIL: She is blackening my name in the village!

The Salem Witch Trials began in the spring of 1692. It began whenever two young women in Salem Village, Massachusetts started acting very strangely out of nowhere. Betty Paris and Abagail Williams screamed and threw fits making accusations that they could see and be controlled by spirits of the devil. A frenzy spread through Salem Village through the colonial Massachusetts whenever the two young women accused people in the town of witchcraft. They claimed that had seen these other people in visions performing the devils work.

Later in the story Tituba under the pressure of the court confest which ignited a hunt for witches. in both the salem witch trials and the red scare people where both paranoid of something. At the time of the witch trials the people were afraid of evil spirits, and the devil if you were accused of being a witch you would lose almost everything you owned. With the power of the church the people of Salem where easy overpowered by Propaganda and hysteria, with this people started so claim any was a witches for power, land, and even political strength. “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”( Arthur Miller.)