(Sowers, Campbell, and Key) He exaggerated and exploited the evidence and ruined many reputations. The phrase "witch-hunts" derived from the hearings due to the similarity to the Salem witch trials. The Salem witch trial is analogous to the McCarthy trials of 1950; in both situations wide spread hysteria occurs, deriving from existing fears of the people of that era. The Salem witch hunt trials parallel the McCarthy era in three crucial aspects: unwarranted accusations, hostile interrogations of many innocent people, and they demonstrated how hard times lead to society's need to find a scapegoat. The unwarranted accusations that Joseph McCarthy and the citizens of Salem made are what fueled the widespread hysteria in both situations.
The Salem Witch Trials occurred in 1692, but as history tends to repeat itself, the similar destructive event of McCarthyism took place in the 1950’s. Both the Salem Witch Trials and the Second Red Scare shared a lot of the same attributes. They both had strings of accusations based on suspicion alone, both spread fear and hatred where there was no need for it, and both events spiraled out of control as a chain reaction of accusations occurred. The two events also used Man’s innate sense of greed and fear to overtake sense and help someone to rise to power. The Salem Witch Trials were a result of mass hysteria fueled by the accusations of Abigail Williams and her friends.
At the start of 1692, two adolescent girls from Salem village started to ail from mysterious fits. Seventeen months afterwards, after lawful action was taken on 144 individuals, with 20 of them being sentenced to death, the humiliating Salem witchcraft court proceedings ended at long last. (Norton, 2003 pg. 3 -4) During those times, the magistrates who headed court cases paid no attention to women as well as girls who were aged below twenty five years old but in that witch case, things took a different turn as women were the prevalent accusers and the magistrate gave them opportunity to air their views (Norton, 2003 p.7). Norton's supposition regarding the 1692 hunt for witches at Salem village support a clash of traditions thesis and some
Lastly, it can be concluded that women may have been responsible for the witch accusations because of the low class that the men of the village put the women into. In 1951, in a small village in the south France, about 50 people became insane because of a contamination in the flour that they were using to make everyday items such as bread and pastries. While reading about this incident, a woman named Linda Caporael made a connection that helped researchers to investigate the cause of the Salem witch trials. After further research it was discovered that the same harmful drug was found in a lot of the flour that was eaten by the women who were alive and active during the time of the Salem witch trials. Toxicologist concur that ingesting the contaminated flour could cause symptoms such as
Because john stayed with his wife and didn’t, or couldn’t, leave her to be with Abby it drove Abby mad. She started this witch scare so she could call Goodie Proctor a witch and she would either be sentenced to death or put in jail. Today people get married and divorced within weeks. Weather this is a good or bad thing is your own opinion. In the crucible many people were branded as witches.
It says in the textbook that it’s estimated that between on million and nine million Europeans were executed as witches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Again, also people from the British colony were doing what they wanted to do, But in there colony witchcraft is bad and you get hung for it, my thing is that the people they locked up for witchcraft and killed, Judge Hawthorne would not let the people tell there part because some of them did it and some didn’t. it also says in the book, small parish of Salem village many were quick to blame witchcraft when the ministers daughter and several other girls were afflicted by seizures and lapses. I just think its crazy how judge Hawthorne and Judge Kaufman could really execute people without getting the full story on both parts of the
Some say the horror of the witch trials was so profound that its supernatural echoes can still be heard on Salem's streets. The first seeds of trouble arrived with the Puritans in 1630. It was a family dispute in Rev. Samuel Parris' household in 1692 that sparked the hunt. Parris' slave, Tituba, taught his daughters and other women in the community 'witchy' little games that were just intended to be fun and entertaining.
Soon after this event in the woods, the adults began to notice the girls exhibiting strange behavior. They seemed nervous, they cried easily, and they were prone to nightmares. The first girl to be affected in the play is Ruth Putnam (Women in World History). In actuality, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams were the first two girls to be affected. As a result of Betty’s illness, Tituba was asked to bake a “witchcake” in order to figure out what was causing Betty Parris to have these strange symptoms.
Therefor we know mass hysteria is a group disease. Some of the factors needed to escalate things to a grand scale are things such as lying, faking, and a large group of people being ill. If such a thing happened to where everyone was to act like this it would end up causing an epidemic all over. What prompts us to be so appalled by the Salem Witch Trials and the Holocaust is that we are all naïve. We can see what is happening but we never feel the need to act and do something about it.
Macbeth's flaw is clearly his ambition because he says so himself almost immediately after hearing the witches' prophecy. As he is travelling down the path of his downfall, his disturbances are clearer because his ambition gets in the way. The act that Macbeth committed was called regicide in Shakespearean times and was seen as an act against God natural order. Shakespeare revolves the play around regicide because the king at that time James I was a victim of this and he also was very interested in witchcraft which is why Shakespeare used the three witches in this play. Some might say that Macbeth is certainly a play 'fit for a king'.