The Salem Witch Trials And The Salem Witch Trials And The Crucible

The Salem witch trials were a dark time in our history, filled with paranoia, betrayal, the innocence of children, and vengeance.The incident would be so severe that it would leave bitter scars that have continued to this day.

“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.

Robert Calef was a merchant in Massachusetts during the witch hunts of 1692. The primary source that is being analyzed isn’t about him but is from many stories that he collected and put them together in a manuscript. This manuscript that contains true accounts about the trial and it included the attempted escape of Mrs. Cary of Charlestown Massachusetts told from her husband Nathaniel Cary’s viewpoint. I believe that Nathaniel Cary wanted this account to be written in order to highlight and expose how the puritans handled the witch trials and specifically the trial against his wife and to inform people of what was truly happening in New England at the time. In this primary source analysis, I will be discussing what this document tells us

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.

There are many factors that contribute to the cause behind the Salem Witch Trials but I am only going to state the ones I feel most important to me like politics, religion, family feuds, economics, and the imagination and fear of the people. With such a small town there is a lot of talk and conflict among others which begins causing hysteria and eventually got 20 people killed because of it, people who were not in fact guilty.

Life in the New England colonies during the 1600’s proved to be harsh with the constant fear of Native American attacks, scarce food, freezing winters, and conflicting opinions about religion. From this perpetual state of distress, the Salem Witch Trials were birthed, causing a wave of hysteria in Salem Village and Salem Town. Though the exact day and month is uncertain, historians can claim that the trials emerged in early 1692 and came to a close in 1693. The Salem Witch Trials started in 1692 with more than one hundred fifty people being accused of practicing witchcraft, and the trials finally ended with the courts declaring there was no evidence in the cases being tried, and the Governor stopped the trials because his wife was accused.

The United States Government has no problem with getting out on technicalities. Thus it is not surprising that we have the same human rights problems now that we did during the Salem Witch Trials. In Guantanamo Bay, people accused of terrorism are held without conviction for as long as 15 years. The United States Government is allowed to do this without charging the accused because it is not United States territory. Although this may not be morally correct, it certainly serves the purpose of getting people to confess, and holding people that are believed to be a threat to this country. There are plenty of similarities in due process shared between Guantanamo Bay and Salem, Massachusetts.

It has been said many times that history repeats itself but we often don’t get an example of how this is. One such example is the crucible about the 1692 Salem witch trials relates to the 1950’s red scare. These two brutal times in history really may not look obviously related to each other but deeper into the story it becomes more apparent that they are fundamentally the same. The similarity’s become more apparent when you look at The Crucible than we will change perspective and look at the red scare a little more in depth and polish it all off by seeing why Arthur Miller wrote the crucible and how they related to each other.

From court trials to hanging, from historical artifacts and the book “The Crucible”. This is all that happened during the Salem Witch Trials that occurred in 1692 in Massachusetts. This happened in a puritan community that, unfortunately, believed in witches and witchcraft. A story being told by a slave named Tituba quickly got out of hand as the girls being told the story started rumors that they were cursed. The girls participated in illegal fortune telling activities, which led to a game of blame. Because of the three girls “acting strangely”, innocent civilians of the small town began to perish.

In 1692 in the city of Salem, Ma there was an uproar in the city. The people in Salem went against each other, they would call each other witches. They would say that they stole something or they are acting strange, they would make up things just so the other person would get in trouble. Salem was a small city so word got around fast. The witchcraft began before the trials and the false claims occurred. About one hundred and forty one people were arrested, nineteen people were also hanged and one was crushed because heavy stones were put on his chest which broke his ribs, piercing his heart and lungs. They would either lay there with the stones on top of them until they confessed they were a witch or lied to them just to get the stones off them or they would let the stones crush them, having the people not knowing if the person was a witch or not. Trials were pointed at people who were accused of working or doing witch craft. Trials lasted between sixteen ninety two to sixteen ninety three. Many people were gathered up and try for witchcraft. Some who were arrested died in prison while waiting for trial. The accused were fourteen women and five men who were hanged. Many people died for things they didn't do and for the rumors that weren’t true. Some of the ways they would use to find out of the person was a witch or not were unfair. The events that took place in salem in 1692 are a part of a greater pattern throughout our history to persecute innocent people especially women as witches. Some of the ways they would use to find out if the person was a witch or not was unfair.

burning. They would tie them to a pole and burn them. This all started over children

Just as the seemingly infinite, devastating succession of the explosive, malevolent international conflicts of which defined the era of World War II drew to a conclusion, territorial borders became redefined, while communities which were once called home for many, had been reduced only to magnificent ruin. While the baby-boomer revolution had presented itself with the addition of many newborn young citizens across the world, the technological and political advancement of nations wrestling together in an ominous presentation of post-war tension, rapidly developed the perception of a horrifying capacity for societal change, an evolution not well adopted by many. From the onset of the Cold War to the “fears of creeping communism” (Miller 1) injected into a society paranoid by the tyrannical cultural adoptions of external nations, the threat of political progression and modification has induced a plaguing hysteria among opponents of the frightening creed. Likewise, the Salem Witch Trials, conducted in the shadows of flawed morality within an alienated theocratic culture, led to the justification of twenty deaths, corroborated by spectral suspicions initiated by little girls which quickly proceeded into the throne of power as the paranoid accusations of witchcraft began to haunt a rapidly evolving community.

Words, opinions, solutions, biases, and verbal atrocities exploded on social media platforms around the world.

It all started with Facebook, where people could post desired snippets of their seemingly perfect lives. Then, Instagram came along. Users would carefully choose one photo or video to sum up whatever they wanted to—whether it be the big game or a friends night out. Finally, Twitter was gifted to us. Twitter enabled the average social media junkie to post short comments about virtually anything. But, despite all of the differences, what do these three internet giants have in common? They keep the social parts of us connected. In recent years, the world truly has been put at our fingertips. We have been given the opportunity to snap, tweet, share, like, view, comment, and scroll through anything. This has revolutionized the way we communicate. We no longer have to talk to each other, or write letters. Face time is no longer a part of a conversation, rather an app on a phone. So, there is a downside to all of this connection. If used incorrectly, social media can have negative effects on mental health.

The police method called “stop and frisk” is the process of a person getting stopped and searched by a police officer in order to search the “suspect” for a weapon or anything illegal. However, this system can easily be abused for the police officer’s own benefit or beliefs. This can effectively destroy the trust between the common people and the police, as the officers can easily plant fake evidence on people they do not like. This is easily comparable to the Salem Witch Trials or The Crucible and the HUAC McCarthyism Red Scare of the 1950s. This is due to how The Crucible is written as an allegory for the Red Scare and how both The Crucible and the “stop and frisk” method are abused for personal gain.