Massachusetts Bay Colony

A fundamental and timeless part of literature from the Salem Witch Trials to the Red Scare to present day Disney movies, evil antagonists provide a source of conflict for a story. Author, Arthur Miller instills villain qualities in one of his main characters, Abigail. The Crucible, a story written about the Salem Witch Trials, demonstrated the power of those who strived for it compared to the outcasts living in Salem during those times. In charge of accusing men and woman of appearing with…

Transcendentalism was first practiced by the likes of Henry David Thoreau in the mid eighteenth century. Displeased with society, Thoreau moved into a one room shack, isolated in the woods, where he wrote Walden. Transcendental ideas have been preserved throughout time by people like Chris McCandless. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, details McCandless’s journey all over the nation after graduating at Emory University. All in all, transcendental ideas have proven to be very relevant today. Not…

The question of whether or not cannibalism occurred in the Jamestown settlement in the 1600’s had been debated by historians for generations. Recently, scholars have turned their attention towards a different question with regards to the cannibalism rumors; the more modern line of inquiry about Jamestown, exemplified in Rachel Herrman’s The “tragicall historie”: Cannibalism and Abundance in Colonial Jamestown, is focused on the reasoning behind why multiple accounts of the events were published,…

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832, to Abby May and Amos Bronson Alcott (Price). In a letter to her father twenty-five years later, Alcott described herself as being born “bawling at the disagreeable world” (Kort). Louisa May Alcott’s father was a philosopher and educator, a leader in transcendentalism, and a spokesman for the abolitionist movement (Heginbotham). Fascinated by child development, he observed his own children in various stages, including,…

A close reading on Sidney Sheldon’s “The Sands of Time” The book of Sidney Sheldon entitled Sands of time is about the lives of 4 nuns from a convent in Spain. At the beginning, a few of the dictator of Spain’s followers were burning the church as well as the convent where the 4 nuns were residing in. The men had killed the priests, raped the nuns as well as steal anything valuable within the house of God. The story revolves around the lives of the 4 nuns who managed to escape just in time. It…

Mass hysteria has been occurring since the 1600's. Even today in the twenty-first century there has been mass hysteria such as, 2012 when the world was going to end, and there were many reasons and resolutions to 2012 hysteria. In 2012, a mass hysteria surged through the public in the United States. The entire public panicked thinking the world was going to end. A smiliar public hysteria occurred during the 1600's when the town of Salem believed that Lucifer walked with them and that…

On March 5, 1770 a mob of colonists armed with clubs surrounded the customs house in Boston where the kings money was kept. The mob surrounded the guard posted there and threatened his life so the red coats were called in, to disperse the mob and the defend the customs house. The colonists started to attack the redcoats tasked with defending the customs house, Which lead to an unordered shot fired by one of the soldiers, not directly at the colonists. According to the Captain Thomas Preston the…

During the Salem witch trials, over two hundred people were accused of using witchcraft and twenty people were executed. Even those who were innocent were hanged because they refused to falsely confess to the crime that they didn’t commit. Those who were accused of using witchcraft and confessed to doing it would presumably have their name blackened in the village. Despite women being the most vulnerable to being accused of witchery during this period, the most responsible person for the…

Attics, we use them for storage. A great way to save space, and also one of the more "creeper" areas within our homes. So, this got me thinking, why do important scenes in horror movies take place within the attic? I mean, they are prevalent in in films that utilize them to house cursed objects, ghosts, spirits, demons, and ext. I studied this by picking 3 artifacts that use the attic well, review sources that analyze why or how the attic is used, how I did all this, and analyzing the scenes…

girls started displaying wild and peculiar behavior that a local doctor, William Griggs, diagnosed as bewitchment. The Salem Witch Trials had a negative impact on American history because it caused mass hysteria that spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, was fueled by residents suspicion of and resentment toward their neighbors, and the belief in the devil's practice of giving certain humans the power to harm others in return for their loyalty.…