Character Analysis: The Salem Witch Trials

Why did the people catch on to the “witch” hysteria so quickly, and you also may be wondering who in their right mind would start all of this and why? So as said in the first few chapters of the book, “ Betty and Abigail began to twitch and choke and contort their bodies into strange abnormal shapes, crouch beneath the furniture, and speak in words that made no sense.” (Schanzer 19). Their symptoms only had grew worse as the days went by, forcing Reverend Parris (their father) to become suspicious. He had tried everything, from consulting with doctors to having them drink elixirs, and smell salts made of blood, ashes, and deer antlers. Nothing worked. Then an elderly physician of the name William Griggs claimed the girls to be “under and evil …show more content…
It most likely did’nt, the reason being is because of the fact that deeper into the period, (when the Salem Witch Trials were dying out) this is what happened to the girls “Reverend Parris sent Betty off to Salem Town to live with Stephen Sewall,* Parris’s distant cousin. Most of Betty’s symptoms stopped right away” (Schanzer 122). If Betty was so-called bewitched how did it stop so suddenly because of the fact that she moved to live in different house? Although, Abigail (her adopted cousin) may have legitimately been ill. “Parris’s niece Abigail stopped giving testimony against the accused witches by June 1692, long before the trials ended. Nobody knows why she disappeared from the hearings, but Abigail is the other accuser who may have actually been sick. She never did fully recover from the fits she had suffered and was no older than 17 when she died.¨ (Schanzer …show more content…
It embittered him to know that this was his punishment. He thought God was intending to do him a malicious deed.“The religious changes that occurred in England during the early 1500s were less concerned with doctrinal matters”(His religion states that God controls everything in this universe).¨That might have make perfect sense because most every-one believed in witches and the Devil back in those days.¨ (Schanzer 112) Parris believed that this was all happening due to the fact that his career is ending and his cantankerous temperament . So we know that the puritans pious religion has a huge role in this situation. Doctors today are still unsure how epilepsy is passed. As stated previously, I came to the conclusion if that that's what abigail had. I think Betty may have had a slimmer chance of having it because she had died later that Abigail even though Abigail was older.¨ We still don't know if Betty was really sick from the dread disease back in 1692, though she was one of the two people who were most likely to have truly been ill.¨ (Schanzer