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. One cause of the Salem witch trial hysteria was jealousy. This jealousy was created from other’s female gender, age and marital status. Based on document B provided, the accusers were around the age of 16-20, female, and accused mostly women (41-60), that were married of being a witch. Drawing to a conclusion, the accusers, younger and single girls, were jealous of old, married women who had their future set for them …show more content…
Salem was a town divided into two sides, the west side being poor, and the east side being where wealthy people stayed. Document E shows that the accusers were mainly on the west side, and the accused witches were mostly on the east side, this showing that the poor were the ones mainly accusing the rich and wealthy. Document E’s evidence is backing up the theory that another cause of the Salem witch `trial hysteria was Salem being divided, with one side accusing the other. “Although” statement where you agree there might be other contributing causes. It is true that other causes may help explain the hysteria. For example, hallucinogens (like LSD) could have gotten mixed up in the grain supply. However, with other theories like the hallucinogen theory, the other causes like jealousy, lies, and a town divided have had more evidence that builds up with their case. Even though other theories still have evidence with their side, the ideas of jealousy, lies, and a town divided has evidence rooted from sources recorded with people in 1692, at the time of the Salem witch trial
The spectral evidence seen by the girls was believed by the court. The court took the girl's words and many innocent people were accused. The accusation soon spread around the village and it caused the great fear of villagers. This vicious cycle cause harm to the village for centuries. To begin with, Salem witch hunt is heavily played on the spectral evidence and the paranoia of fear.
In the play called The Crucible by Miller talks about people being accused of being witches. In a small town in Massachusetts people were getting accused of being witches. Many people were not a witch but they the people did not believe them. They ended up killing the all the people who was accused of being a witch. The Salem Witch Trial of 1692 was caused by lying girls, jealous people, and people who more power than the others.
When one is accused of being a witch, their land and reputation are lost. Accusing Easterners of witchcraft, therefore, was a simple way for Westerners to decrease the wealth and reputation of the Easterners that the Westerners were so jealous
In Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible, passions turned into problems. Witchcraft in Salem Massachusetts became a remembered event since 1692. Three girls were said to have interactions with the devil. When they were confronted about it they denied every interaction the people who were convicted they would say they weren’t a witch and would bring someone else’s name into the equation. Those who would admit to being a witch would go to jail, but for those who denied having interaction with the devil would have been trialed and hung, so really, anyway you put it
This evidence helps explain the jealousy and boredom the young girls experienced during this period of time, Another possible cause for the Salem witch trials was that the girls were great liars and
In Document B, Demos presents that most of the accusers of witches were single females in their younger years of age. In the late 1600s, women were extremely dependent upon men for their financial stability, overall safety, and mental/emotional well being. In an interpretation of this document, it can be assumed that these younger female women were seeking family ties and protection in a harsher time period. On the same hand, Document C, a most likely extremely biased account, recounts the “bewitched actions” of Bridget Bishop, a witch, upon the afflicted. Samuel Parris, the examiner of Bishop, seems to shed a negative light on Bishop.
While the Puritans expressed their need of love and care for one another the exact opposite was show in Salem, Massachusetts. In June of 1692, Bridget Bishop was accused of bewitching and causing misery to the people in Salem. Her accusers blamed her for attending witch meetings, beating, choking, biting people, appearing to the people in a ghostly form, for odd behaviors in cattle, and the deteriorating health that caused deaths or fits among the children. It is obvious to see that the accusers used her as a scapegoat for the oddities they could not explain in their life. The judges accused Bridget of fabricating lies about her innocence in the trial when the accusers were quite painfully obvious of their deceit within their weak stories of
Salem, Massachusetts, USA and occurred between February 1692 and May 1693. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned and even more accused; but not pursued by the authorities. 29 were convicted of witchcraft but only 19 were hanged. The best known trials were in the Court of Oyer and Terminer.
The Salem Witch Trials; Madness or Logic In Stacey Schiff’s, List of 5 Possible Causes of the Salem Witch Trials and Shah Faiza’s, THE WITCHES OF SALEM; Diabolical doings in a Puritan village, discuss in their articles what has been debated by so many historians for years, the causes of the Salem Witch trials. Schiff and the Faiza, purpose is to argue the possible religious, scientific, communal, and sociological reasons on why the trials occurred. All while making word by word in the writer’s testimony as if they were there through emotion and just stating simply the facts and theories. They adopt the hectic tone in order to convey to the readers the significance, tragedy, logic, loss, and possible madness behind these life changing events,
Intro Paragraph + Thesis: Events such as unfair stereotyping, paranoia, and targeting ideas through accusing people, appear in The Crucible, McCarthy Era, and contemporary America; despite those many similarities, there are a few contrasts, such as who was attacked, how to the information was spread and exhibits, or the lack of, of guilt. Unfair stereotyping has lead to accusing and convicting the innocent. Witchcraft may have been an easy assumption to make because Tituba, a slave and accused witch, is said to have been from Barbados, a place known for its practice of voodoo, but there are “no references to this [Tituba practicing witchcraft] in the court records.” (Brooks 2016).
The Salem witch trial hysteria of 1692 may have been instigated by religious, social, geographic and even biological factors. During these trials, 134 people were condemned as witches and 19 were hanged. These statistics also include 5 more deaths that occurred prior to their execution date. It is interesting to look into the causes of this stain on American History, when as shown in document B, eight citizens were hanged in only one day.
Imagine being a wealthy 45-year-old woman in 1692 being accused of being a witch. The Salem Witch trials were caused by jealousy, fear, and lying. People believed that the devil was real and that one of his tricks was to enter a normal person 's body and turn that person into a witch. This caused many deaths and became a serious problem in 1692. First of all, jealousy was one of the causes of the Salem witch trials.
"In an ordinary crime, how does one defend the accused? One calls up witnesses to prove his innocence. But witchcraft is, ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be a witness to it? The witch and the victim.
The Salem witch trial was a time about accusing your fellow neighbor or being accused yourself, this all began in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. During this time many people were being accused of being a witch, a majority of the time it was because either someone truly believed that you were a witch and were reeking havoc or they were trying to find someone to take the blame if they were to being accused. So this leads us to question, what began the Salem Witch Trials? There were at least three causes of the Salem witch trials hysteria. These were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams story, Ergotism, and the acknowledgment of hysteria.
Not many people know much about what actually happened in the Salem Witch Trials. Maybe someone would think that it was just about witchcraft and crazy people being hanged, but it is a lot more than that. The Salem Witch Trials only occurred between 1692 and 1693, but a lot of damage had been done. The idea of the Salem Witch Trials came from Europe during the “witchcraft craze” from the 1300s-1600s. In Europe, many of the accused witches were executed by hanging.