Witch Hunts: The Salem Witch Trials

Superior Essays
In the year 1692, unusual and incomprehensible events occurred in Salem Village, Massachusetts, after a group of young girls had sinister episodes. For instance, “they would fall on the floor, shaking and trembling in seizures, or sit and stare off into space, unaware of the world around them. They would cry and shout curses uncontrollably” (Magoon 7). The Puritan settlers in the Salem community grew fearful as more girls became victims of these episodes. The village began to suspect that witchcraft was culpable for these events. Most people today would find what happened in Salem, as a result, to be terribly unjust. The Salem witch trials and their atrocities were made possible by a ‘perfect storm’ of factors, including a chaotic and danger-ridden …show more content…
A witch-hunt is the “searching out and persecution of individuals who are perceived as threats” (Magoon 105). All witch-hunts, then and now, have the aim to seek out individuals for suspicion of committing an offense that is outside of society’s morals. One characteristic of a witch-hunt is that they occur during a time of social mayhem in society, which causes a threat to individuals. For instance, life in Salem Village was arduous at the beginning. Settlers faced many diseases, including smallpox. They suffered crop failure and many more obstacles that were out of their control. When times got hard for the Puritan settlers, they needed someone or something to blame for these pitfalls in their life, resulting in the accusation of individual of witchcraft (Magoon …show more content…
The aftermath of 9/11 would be one such situation. After the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, Americans were fearful of Islamic terrorists. Many Americans believed that all Muslims were terrorists, even though the majority were not at all. Police arrested many Middle-Eastern individuals over suspicions of terrorist activities. The numerous accusations against a particular group of individuals after a turbulent period is a significant characteristic in a witch-hunt. According to Robert Rapley, “The most pronounced characteristic of a witch-hunt is that the accused is automatically treated as guilty” (Rapley). In our court system today, we believe that every individual is innocent before being proven guilty. We see the complete opposite of this idea in the Salem witch trials. All people accused of witchcraft were automatically assumed guilty and thrown into

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Walter Kirn once said, “Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it 's someone else 's witch being hunted.” Krin is a regular reviewer for The New York Times Book Review and has authored a handful of previous works of fiction. This quote applies to Richard Godbeer’s historical monologue Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 in the sense that most people have viewed the Salem Witch Trials as a form of entertainment in recent decades. His work, however, brings forward the reality of witch trials and the extreme measures people took just a few hundred years ago. Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 follows the main themes of faith, superstition, reputation, uncertainty and unreliability.…

    • 1037 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    One of the most famous cases of witchcraft took place within the British colonies in 1692. They were located in Salem, Massachusetts and were appropriately named: The Salem Witch Trials. The Salem Witch Trials were a unique part of American history, that brought fear, dishonesty, and death over a small, religion-based community for over a year. When examined deeply, several instances of underlying conflict reveal the reasons for why such an event happened. The end result of these trials took the lives of over twenty, and over one hundred and fifty victims were accused (Latner 138).…

    • 1024 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Salem Witch Hunt was a series of execution that took place in 1692 after a group of young women began having fits and accused several people of bewitching them. The accusers were named based on conflicts and other factors that they had with the afflicted girls and others. The Puritan’s fear of the Devil made their society more susceptible to the hysteria. Puritan religious beliefs, Puritan attitudes toward women and also their interaction between the natural and the supernatural phenomena played vital roles in the contribution of the Salem Witch Hunt hysteria.…

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Salem Witch Trials In 1692 a small town in Massachusetts, Salem, set of one of the biggest most well known hysterias, the Witch Trials. First person to accuse someone of witchcraft was the young daughter of Reverend Parris and she accused two other Salem women and a Caribbean slave, Tituba (Keene). G.K. Chesterton once stated, “It is one thing to believe in witches, and quite another to believe in witch-smellers.” During the trials, most people were trying to express their guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims (Miller, 7).…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Salem Witch Trials In 1692 in Salem Village, Massachusetts, many of the young girls and women were complaining of being possessed by the devil due to witchcraft. However, none of the villagers were certain of who was doing the witchcraft. The girls accused many other women and some men in the village out of revenge or pure hatred. “Thousands of suspected witches were hanged or burned in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and belief in witches was common in the American colonies”.…

    • 978 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In 1692, Puritans in colonial Massachusetts faced an interesting event called the Salem Witch Trials. The first sign of witchcraft was discovered when two girls, Elizabeth and Williams were having “fits.” The local doctor blamed their unusual movements on the supernatural. Satan worried the Puritan community because they believed that they always had to behave to go to heaven. Whether puritans were in or out of their home, they believed the devil was always watching them which is why they were always cautious towards their actions.…

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From Paranoia to Pardon Years ago many christians believed that the devil would give certain people the power to harm others in return for complete loyalty.(A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials, 2007.) These people were known as “witches.” Tens of thousands of people were killed for supposedly being witches throughout Europe, and more than 200 people were accused , 20 of them being killed in Massachusetts alone. In this essay I will explain what the Salem Witch Trials were, how they affected the state of Massachusetts, and how they still affect us today. The Salem Witch Trials happened in Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693.…

    • 1236 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Since the early 17th century multiple lands in Europe and Puritan Colonial communities in New England had been living in suspicion of members in their communities to be practising witchcraft while living amongst them in secret. The act of practising witchcraft was punishable by death. In many small farming towns, such as the infamous Salem, Massachusetts, this had gained Salem a dark reputation. The practice of witch trials had been going on for 300 years.…

    • 1720 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What started as curious young girls playing with the idea of mysticism quickly escalated into one of the most infamous trials in United States history. The puritan community of Salem has become married to notions of hysteria, mystery, and dark magic. However, through the investigation of Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum in their book Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, the roots of the trials are revealed to be community based. If the events of the witch-trials are seen as symptoms for socio-economic tensions between the Salem Town and Salem Village, a clearer picture begins to form of the events’ true motivation. By focusing on the divisions in the area within the set up of the town, factions within the village, and WHATEVER…

    • 1140 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Religious Colonists v. Merchant Colonists The main cause for the Salem Witch trials was the accusations towards the merchant colonists by the religious colonists of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 because of the religious views of the time and the economical changes brought by the merchants, and no other underlying cause was as influential as this one. The Puritans of Salem believed in witches that followed Satan and carried out his work. The merchants that caused the economic prosperity of Salem threatened the people’s Puritan values. The witch trials that followed were not caused by any stresses or anxieties of the colonial era.…

    • 1155 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Images of women screaming at the stake while being burned, religious leaders yelling about damnation and hellfire, and young girls going into convulsive fits fill the minds of many Americans. Frances Hill takes on the daunting task of sorting through the various information and creating a single book that elaborates more on the tragic events that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts during the 1690’s, as well as including a detailed index, chapter notes, a total death toll, chronology, and a list of key persons and their ties to the Salem Witch Trials. Hill expertly conveys the true cause of the Salem Witch Trials as well as the outcomes and catalysts in twenty five chapters. Each chapter tackles a…

    • 810 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The words, witch hunts, are usually looked at as a joke or stupidity on the side of the humans. One of the most well-known witch hunts in history was in Massachusetts Salem. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he discusses the seriousness and unjustness of the crucible. Major power often results in the abuse of power and corruption, is one of the things he said provoked the witch hunts in Salem. In act two, John Proctor was furious because Abigail accused his wife, Elizabeth, of witchcraft.…

    • 1098 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A Legal History, Peter C. Hoffer closely examines the many complexities of the bizarre Salem Witchcraft Trials and offers explanations as to what led up to and caused the terrible event. In the book, Hoffer uses analogies and insight to village life to support his explanations. This paper will review Hoffer’s re accounting of the trials, his theories on the trails, and the way in which he presents his arguments.…

    • 1212 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Salem Witch Trials, had its dealings with the supernatural world, people afflicted (or bewitched) seeing “witches’ in their visions, a “mysterious” man taunting people to sign his book, or even unexplained deaths of livestock or even an infant. Whatever it may have been, the people of Salem Village all assume that it is “supernatural.” Samuel Parris and others speculate that anything supernatural is because of the doings, or even presence of the devil. It is this concept that brought forth the Witch Trials which convicted over two-hundred, and nineteen of them hanged. Their convictions stemmed from people who bewitched, seeing them in visions.…

    • 1119 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the spring of 1692 one of the most historical events occurred. Mainly remembered for the drama and religion surrounding it, the Salem witch trials shocked everyone. Most forget that these were real people, mostly due to all the typical Hollywood over dramatization of this historical experience. This event , although only claiming the lives of a few, is still remembered till this day as a gruesome massacre. In total 19 individuals where murdered for the crime of being witches.…

    • 1188 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays