Witchcraft In The Crucible

Intro: The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a play about the Salem Witchcraft. The Crucible takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Abigail accuses several local women of witchcraft. A group of teenage girls were found dancing in the woods by the Parris, Betty father. Knowing that the punishment for their behavior will be severe, the girls claim that they were possessed by the spirits. Betty ends up being in a coma and there is no explanation to why. Reading act one, Abigail is most responsible for causing all of the witchcraft.

Everyday fear, hysteria, and revenge are big factors of life. A person is either afraid of something, have hysteria about something, or want revenge. In "The Crucible" there is a lot of fear with the trials of witchery, hysteria also with the witchery and revenge for all the false accusations about being a witch.

The Crucible took place in Salem, Massachusetts where the Puritans lived in a restricted society with a unique culture and lifestyle. Puritans lives focused on religion and following God’s plan. Throughout the The Crucible religion played a major role in regards to the plot of the story. Religion was a big deal to the Puritans as it was a requirement to attend church.They wanted to live a simple and peaceful life. Because religion had a major impact on this society, it made people go crazy when the word witchcraft got brought up within the Salem village. In The Crucible the girls started dancing around a fire and being rowdy and this behavior was unusual so it was just assumed that they were practicing witchcraft because Betty lie unconscious

Over 127,00 U.S. citizens were imprisoned during World War 2 just because of having japanese ancestry. Putting the Japanese Americans into internment camps shows how there was hatred and unjust behavior towards one another in America. This is also shown in Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible”. The Crucible and the Japanese internment camps also have something in common, they both were caused by hysteria and greed. In both of these incidents, the people that were being accused were average citizens. The witches that were being accused were normal people whose only fault was not being liked by a fellow citizen. The accused Japanese were average American citizens like you and me; their only fault was

Back in Puritan life, many women were accused of practicing witchcraft. Many people feel the Salem Witch Trials were a fraud, but they cannot decide if this fraud was due to ergot poisoning, certain townspeople influencing the teenagers to accuse people in order to gain land or economic prosperity, or boredom of the teenage girls. Although there are many theories on why girls of Salem accused others of witchcraft, I believe the Salem Witch Trials occurred because the teenage girls of Salem were bored due to the strict religious environment.

In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller was a chaos between the Salem town and witchcraft. This play took place during the witch trails in Salem. Which the witch trials were a bunch of hearings and prostitutions of people accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts in the spring of the year 1962. Abigail Williams was responsible for witchcraft because she was a liar, a manipulator, and an accuser.

In Witches: The Absolutely True Tale Of Disaster In Salem by Rosalyn Schanzer people in the town of Salem were Condemned for being witches. By the end of it all more than 200 people were accused and 20 were executed. Horridly they accused people from all ages, everyone from teenager to ancient was accused. But why? The Salem Witch Trials were caused by hysteria, popularity, and revenge.

In Salem, Massachusetts, Puritans were strong believers in the Bible. The Bible states, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The Puritans beliefs led to them accusing 20 innocent people of being a witch, this resulted in their deaths in 1692. Even though the Puritans couldn’t see it at the time, their accusations were really based off jealousy, lies, and Salem being divided into two parts.

Can you imagine being accused of a crime that you did not commit? This is exactly what happened from June 10th to September 22nd. Twenty innocent women were put to death in a small town by the name of, Salem Boston. This was called the “ Salem Witch Trials.” The Salem Witch Trials were due to a variety of things. Jealousy , lying, and attention are 3 of most important factors.

“Controlled hysteria is what’s required. To exist constantly in a state of controlled hysteria. It’s agony. But everyone has agony. The difference is that I try to take my agony home and teach it to sing” (Arthur Miller, AZ Quotes). In the play, the Crucible, by Arthur Miller, Salem, Massachusetts was a place of constant hysteria in the 1600s because of what would come to be commonly known as the Salem Witch Trials. This was a full-blown witch hunt for people found to display signs of witchcraft. Abigail Williams was the main person to blame for this pursuit of witches in Salem because, first off, she was the one who caused hysteria about witchcraft just to cover up the fact that

I think The Crucible’s theme is witchcraft. The main problem in town was witches or someone having a spell on somebody else. One example on why i say the theme is witchcraft is because Mrs.Putnam blamed witches for all of her kids dying. Another example was that Abigail & the girls were acting strange throughout the whole play & were acting like they were never involved with witchcraft.Finally another reason was that people were blaming innocent people for witchcraft.

The Salem witch trials were the prosecution of people accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts from June to September 1692 by the Court of Oyer and Terminer. Though the trials were held in Salem, the accused were brought in from the neighboring towns of Amesbury, Andover, Topsfield, Ipswich, and Gloucester as well. To this day the trials are considered the epitome of injustice, paranoia, scapegoating, mass hysteria, and mob justice. The results were almost 200 arrests, 19 executed “witches”, one man pressed to death, one man stoned to death, and two dogs killed because they were suspected to be familiars of their owners who were accused of being witches. (Familiars are evil spirits in the form of animals used by witches to cast spells and perform

Between February 1692 and May 1693, there were a series of hearings where people were being accused of witchcraft. The outcome of the hearings ended with 20 people being executed, but more than 200 people were accused of performing witchcraft. The hearings and prosecutions are very well known as the Salem witch trials. The trials took place in colonial Massachusetts. Nineteen accused witches were convicted and hanged on Gallows Hill in 1692. One accused witch was crushed to death after he failed to plead guilty or not guilty. As many as thirteen other accused witches died in prison.

1692 was a bad time for women in Salem. Most lower class women were accused of witchcraft and killed. A lot of bad things were done to these innocent women, a lot of the time they were tortured to get a confession or to prove she was a witch. Some of these torture methods were inhumane and didn’t really prove anything. They were burned, stretched,crushed, swam; many methods were used and a lot of the time the odds weren’t in the accused’s favor. “More than 200 people were accused, and 24 died; 19 were hanged, four died in prison, and one man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death.” The accused that died as witches didn’t have their deaths recorded, they were lost in time and only documents from Salem give evidence that these handful of people died.

The Crucible is a play written about Puritans around the time of 1692 when the Salem witch trials were taking place. Women, men, and children were scared for their lives afraid that someone would call them a witch and they would be persecuted, put in jail, crushed, or even hanged. This gave the people an idea that if they wanted something someone else had, why not call them a witch let them get killed and take what they leave behind. This caused a mass murder of innocent people to die just because of greed and jealousy.