Impact of Loyalty in The Crucible The deaths of thirty-seven innocent Salem community members in a three-month span resulted from the witch trials of 1692. These deaths resulted from false accusations for selfish reasons supported by an oppressive Puritan based government in the Salem area. These so-called witch trials are so famous that there have been many works of literature as well as movies based off of them. The most notable of these is Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. It is a story based on…
government system can be, and how by using fear, one person can be guaranteed supremacy. To conclude, Abigail cannot be blamed for everything that occurred in Salem. Although partially at fault, she definitely cannot be said to have caused the witch hunts single handedly. Abigail is, was and always will be a victim of her society, as will everyone else in Salem. To be raised in a certain way is how our opinions and ethics are formed, and in a Puritan society they just happen to be very…
The article “When School Was Scary” and the poem “The Ballad of Birmingham” both show very harmful events. The event that happened to the little girl in “The Ballad of Birmingham” is very different and more effective/powerful compared to what happened in “When School Was Scary”. In the article, Elizabeth got verbally and physically abused, but in the poem, the little girl walks into a church and then it gets bombed. Getting blown up is more destructive than getting bullied. In the article “When…
The word witchcraft sounds like witches casting their mysterious spells. In reality, according to a Professor of International Studies, Robert Priest and his article On the Meaning of the Words “Witch,” “Witchcraft,” and “Sorcery”, he claims, “Under...not only the traditional healer...who has used a charm or amulet...identified as practicing “witchcraft” — and may be suspected of what witches traditionally are thought to do, bringing harm and death to others.” Priest mentions the comings of the…
The Pilgrim’s Progress Sin is the act of transgression against divine law. During the 1600s in England, there were two Conventicle Acts that made it a crime for any five people of the same family to meet in a private house under color of religion. John Bunyan, an evangelical Baptist preacher, was incarcerated for twelve years at the Bedford jail because he insisted on preaching the word of Christ. During his incarceration, he used his time wisely to write a novel called, The Pilgrim’s Progress,…
Also known as ‘The Malleus Maleficarum’, The Witch’s Hammer was a book, arguably one of the most infamous books ever written, by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger. The actual translation of it is “Hammer of Witches”. It was published in the year of 1487. During the Inquisition, it served as a guidebook for Inquisitors and was designed to aid them in the identification, prosecution, and dispatching of Witches. It came to be widely regarded as irrefutable truth and are held today by a majority of…
persecution during the reign of Charles the I. The lull however, does not mean there is not a belief in witchcraft, and this can be seen in the masques that were held in Charles I court which featured the forces of evil, such as witches. The lack of witch hunts during Charles I reign could be because of his belief that he was thought of himself as divine and charismatic that his populace would not be infested with witches and demons because his kingdom was in fact perfect. However, it is not…
The trials first sparked and that the witch-hunt events were put into a serious concern was when the three young girls were caught performing rituals in the woods outside the village. The girls, Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam, all were young girls of the Salem village, claimed to…
In the annals of American religious history, spiritualism sits uncomfortably alongside fundamentalism and other conventional forms of religion that command largest portion of scholars’ attention. Ann Braude’s Radical Spirits was one of the first narratives written that documents this important but slighted movement. To the surprise of both nineteenth-century observers and contemporary scholars alike, spiritualists were consumed by the prospect of communication with the dead. Braude provides…
This essay illustrates many factors in Kent’s theory that address the witchcraft accusation is about belief of witches instead of misogynistic persecution of women. The analysis will include three claims that Kent makes in his argument. Specifically, the three major reasons the accusation of witchcraft is not female-targeted are: men have power over women and the society as a whole, and they manipulate such power; second, as well as women, men are also influenced by maleficium, and they practice…