In this sense, the only category of convicts which were burned to death was that of the so-called "satanic Blacks" as this was considered to be the only way of destroying their 'evilness.' In Puritan New England ideology, Blacks were associated with Continue Reading...
And their could be other, more personal reasons for the accusations. For instance, John Westgate's testimony includes a tale of how Mary Parker came to a tavern and chastised her husband for drinking. When John Westgate called her unseemly for comi Continue Reading...
As the Puritan leadership took the stand that their decisions were made directly from the scripture (indeed there was an absolute marriage of Church and State within these communities) any challenge to their processes (such as a newcomer objecting t Continue Reading...
Salem Witchcraft Trials The witch trials of Salem Massachusetts represent one of the most fascinating events in American history. Although the witch-hunt hysteria only lasted approximately one year, the ramifications and lessons learned are still a Continue Reading...
Salem Witch Trials were an atrocity in a period of American history. Several young girls, who had heard tales of the supernatural from a West Indian slave, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused three women of witchcraft. Put in that posit Continue Reading...
Salem Witch Trials Why and How Did the Salem Witch Trials Happen? The Salem Witch Trials occurred in the colonial Massachusetts between the years of sixteen ninety-two and sixteen ninety-three. It was during this time that more than two hundred ind Continue Reading...
America and the seventeenth century in general, as a 'century of saints'. Some also refer to the seventeenth century as the 'golden age of demoniac." Towards the end of such a holy and demonic century the 1692 Salem Witch hunt showed Continue Reading...
Salem Witch Trials -- Theories and Causes In the year 1692, a tragedy occurred that is remembered to be one of the most immense disasters of American History. In a small region of Salem village, which is now the now Danvers, MA area, in the home of Continue Reading...
Later most people admitted that they had overreacted to the situation and even Cotton Mather confessed that "errors" had been made in handling this crisis. The chief judge William Stoughton came under attack for his overzealous response to the accus Continue Reading...
Salem Witchraft Trials Salem witchcraft is probably the most fascinating and most talked about subject in the history of the world. How people were accused of being witches and wizards, the trials that ensued, the baseless charges that were made and Continue Reading...
Salem Citizen at the Witch Trials Sixty years or so before the Salem witch trials were being held in 1692-93 -- a series of events featuring fear, paranoia, ignorance, hysteria, which ended with 20 young women being hanged -- Bernal Diaz del Castil Continue Reading...
While it may explain the violence against the witches, it really does not do a good job of explaining how a society that had moved away from a belief in sorcery changes and begins to believe in sorcery once again. It certainly does not adequately ex Continue Reading...
According to Ray, those explanations ignore what more recent research has identified as the principal cause of the witchcraft hysteria in Salem: religious paranoia, intolerance, and persecution. In that regard, Ray details the historical record sho Continue Reading...
Witchcraft in the 16th & 17 Centuries: Response to Literature At first glance, a logical 21st Century explanation for the "witch craze" (also known as a witch-hunt) during the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe was based largely upon human ignora Continue Reading...
" Finally, in that regard, it seems that the author's choice of Christopher as Tituba's betrayer may suggest that while racial, religious, and ethnic prejudices may have subsided substantially in modern Western society, a fundamental conflict still Continue Reading...
Young Goodman Brown - Ambiguities While in actuality, this short story is an accurate historical reference to Hawthorne's Puritan ancestry and his great grandfathers' participation in the Salem witch trials, through the character of Brown, Hawthorne Continue Reading...
Both Andrew and Abby had been killed in a similar manner -- crushing blows to their skills from a hatchet (Tetimony of Bridget Sullivan in the Trial of Lizzie Borden). Just prior to the murder there was a great deal of conflict at the Borden house. Continue Reading...
Salem and the surrounding Essex County (the witch hunt itself went beyond merely Salem) (Norton; Linder) viewed the results of the First, and now the Second Indian War, and their own loss of material prosperity from these wars, as God's punishment Continue Reading...
Her confession was then the pivotal point for the start of one of the most painful events in the history of the United States. What is interesting to me personally is that Breslaw provides a much more global view of the witch trials and its influen Continue Reading...
Miller focuses a created, heterosexual alliance in his fictional retelling, but I, Tituba concentrates on the outcasts, which formed the actual, majority of the accused. This alliance between marginal categories of persons is humorously underlined Continue Reading...
Most of the American public did not know what communism or Marxism really was as an ideology, they simply knew that it was 'bad' and it was 'un-American,' although logically it could be argued that nothing is more un-American than prosecuting a pers Continue Reading...
However, using today's less rigid religious standards make the outcome of the trials seem ridiculous and completely unjust. Today, most people do not consider witchcraft a reality, and so, basing a court decision on the confession of bewitched young Continue Reading...
movie, The Crucible, was derived entirely from the book entitled, Salem Possessed: the Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul S. Boyer, with only a few differences, owing to technical limitations in movie production. The movie had to reduce the number Continue Reading...
Defense of Lucy Steele While the character traits of Miss Steele seemingly leave much to be desired in the area of respectability by today's standards, her actions can be clearly understood when the setting and time is examined during which Sense a Continue Reading...
The persecution of those deemed to be potential enemies of the state is nothing new in American society. One does not even have to be labeled or perceived as a dangerous threat to be stigmatized, as with women during the Salem witch trials. Homosex Continue Reading...
United States Jury System In United States courts, the jury is a system by which, in theory, defendants are given a trial that is fair and unbiased. The ideal is that twelve persons from the same peer group as the defendant will be able to delibera Continue Reading...
By coming into contact with nature cultures such as the Native American tribes, religions in the Western world were no longer the same. Religious fundamentalism became the basis for many of the often violent interactions between the different cultur Continue Reading...
Patriot Act The September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States had severe and immediate consequences. One of the most far-reaching of these is probably the ease with which terrorists were able to plan and carry out the attacks. This brought the go Continue Reading...
Crucible The film version of Arthur Miller's hit Broadway play of 1953 "The Crucible" was released in 1996. Miller himself wrote the screen play of the film which starred Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder in lead roles and was directed by Nicholas Continue Reading...
Amazing Story of Young Goodman Brown Nathaniel Hawthorne used the character of Young Goodman Brown to tell the story of his own, personal dark night of the soul. Through the eyes of Young Goodman Brown, an innocent young man of principles who was m Continue Reading...
Arthur Miller, notable playwright, wrote the 1953 play, The Crucible that focused on the partially fictionalized and dramatized story of the Salem witch trials that occurred between 1692 and 1693 in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The play was wri Continue Reading...
Crucible and What I Have Learned Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a dramatic, engaging work that challenges the reader/viewer to see beneath the "black and white" dichotomy by which the world is simplistically characterized via such "venerable" inst Continue Reading...
American Studies - Anthology American Studies -- Anthology: Freedom vs. Tyranny America's history includes a number of competing forces. One of the chief struggles has been the clash between Freedom and Tyranny. As Why Freedom Matters shows, our na Continue Reading...
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown (1835) and The Scarlet Letter. It is rather fascinating that the two readings have a number of similarities even though the plots of both stories are rather different. The Young Goodman Brown is all about an Continue Reading...
Nathaniel Hawthorne Life Imitates Were all the literary works of Nathaniel Hawthorne compiled into a single manuscript, then appropriately filtered to include only works of prose and fiction, and if an attempt were then made to uncover a single mot Continue Reading...
And the costs...! Our meager savings, which would keep us for a couple of years in Mexico, " (Rouberol, Jean 2000) So the influence of the McCarthy era and the black lists on literature was mixed. While we certainly lost the possible output of many Continue Reading...
Evans-Pritchard was the founder and first president of the Association of Social Anthropologists. His seminal work on indigenous, African tribes has preserved a unique perspective of primitive societies or societies that retain their aboriginal featu Continue Reading...
Those responsible for murdering atrocities such as Crusades, the witch trials and the Inquisition do not seem, from today's perspective, to have any love in their hearts. One must perhaps also recognize that these perpetrators of murder and terror Continue Reading...
