Salem Witchcraft Trials Hysteria And Craziness - 1470 Words

Salem Witchcraft Trials This period in America can be summed up in two words: Hysteria and Craziness. The 1692 notorious Salem witch trials started after some young girls from Salem Village, Massachusetts, purported to be possessed by demons. The girls accused some local women of bewitching them. As the wild hysteria spread across Massachusetts, a court was specially set up to listen to the cases. Bridget Bishop was the first witch to be convicted and later hanged in June. Eighteen more were hanged at the infamous Salem’s Gallows Hill, and several more children, women and men were sentenced as well, some months later. By September the same year, the craziness and hysteria had started to decrease, and public views turned against the rulings (Baker 2014). Even though the Massachusetts General Court eventually canceled the guilty judgments against the convicted and awarded compensation to their family members, resentment spread across the community. The agonizing legacy of the witch trials would be f elt for many centuries. During February of the remarkably cold winter, a little girl named Betty Parris fell bizarrely ill. She dove under furniture, contorted in pain, complained of fever and dashed about. The cause of Betty’s symptoms might have been some series of delusional psychosis, child abuse, stress, epilepsy, boredom, asthma, and guilt. The signs further might have been caused, as Linder (2009) would debate, by a convulsive ailment called ergotism, caused by excretingShow MoreRelatedSalem Witch Trial Hysteria Essay818 Words   |  4 PagesTwenty people were put to death for witchcraft in Salem during the 1692 Salem Witch Trial Hysteria. In The Crucible, a woman, Elizabeth Proctor, gets accused of witchcraft by a young girl by the name Abigail Williams, who just so happens to be having an affair with Elizabeth’s husband, John. Once John finds out Abigail accused his wife, he starts trying to find proof that all of these young girls are pretending that they ar e being hurt by these older women, just so that they will be hanged. The officialsRead MoreThe Middle Of The 16th Century1571 Words   |  7 Pagesnot present in England. Freedom to practice a religion of choice separate from the king as well as opportunity to make a better life for themselves. Upon their arrival to the New England colonies. They set up camp and established what is known as Salem Massachusetts. They created a strict set off rules as a basis for everyday life which included the following; using government to enforce religious beliefs, believing that the final authority came from the Bible, not from Church officials, and thereforeRead MoreThe Crucible By Arthur Miller1448 Words   |  6 Pages The Salem Witchcraft Trials took place in 1692. The Crucible is a 4 Act play written by Arthur Miller. This drama takes place in Salem village and it accurately depicts the type of hysteria going on during the Salem Witch Trials. Which paralleled the same hysteria surrounding â€Å"McCarthyism†, Wisconsin senator, Joseph McCarthy’s obsessive mission to shine light on a communist infiltration of the United States. In The Crucible there were many characters that were immersed in the chaos while othersRead MoreWitchcraft : The Supernatural Powers Of Witches Essay2327 Words   |  10 PagesWitchcraft can be seen anywhere in today’s modern society, including movies, books, TV shows, fairy tales, poems, plays, and several other places and each of these examples show the evil of a witch. Belief in witchcraft has gone all the way back to the 400’s when St. Augustine told his people that there was no way for witches to live in God’s world and have supernatu ral powers, but soon people started to believe in the mystical powers of witches. These beliefs began to turn into fear and accusationsRead MoreJohn Proctor s Struggle With His Conscience1836 Words   |  8 Pagescan be a proud one, accepted with honour after making his love and more importantly his peace with God. However his natural instinct, given to him upon his birth is telling him to lie. That he should lose his good name, confess to dealing with witchcraft. Telling him to lose some, perhaps all the respect people have for him but to keep his life. To lose his dignity but to keep his life. To live to see his children grow up, to see his unborn child be born, to watch his wife grow old with him. But