The Salem Witch Trial hysteria of 1492 was caused by a variety of factors including the Puritans of Salem's inability to admit any wrongdoing on their part and tendency to blame all wrongdoing on the devil. This, along with their fundamentalist values, created an environment of paranoia towards witchcraft. Also, people of influence were saying that there were witches in Salem. As teenagers living in as strict of a society as the Puritans had, the accusers would rather have gone to the extreme of accusing innocent people of witchcraft than admitting to any misbehavior on their part. When one accuser cried witch, the others were willing to do the same and in a way began to believe their own lies.
When Abigail was talking to Proctor she says “She is telling lies to about me! She is a cold sniveling woman, and you bend to her!”(Page 15, act one) she is basically showing her jealousy towards his wife. This stirred up the witch trials because Abigail wanted to be with Proctor and she would do just about anything. The fact that John proctor realizes all of his flaws and confesses to all of his sins is another reason why he can be considered a tragic hero. When Proctor had to go to the court to get his wife out of being accused of upholding witchcraft he eventually confess to his sins he committed.
When the trials began, many accused others of witchcraft and this lead to them accusing even more. The new news of the entire witchcraft epidemic in Salem left many disturbed and trying to eliminate the bad of the town. The novel allows the reader to reflect on the life of the Salem people and understand the happenings. One example is the reflection of the lives of teenage girls in the puritan society, sent by God to marry and have a family, lacking the happiness of teen hood. Thus, explaining a
A radical religion called Puritanism was vitally important to the people of Salem, and they were extraordinarily paranoid of the Devil. Two characters in the book The Crucible demonstrate how Puritanism affected the society. Judge Danforth is an example of religious ignorance and ends up being the person who condemns everyone, suspecting they are all witches. On the other hand, John Proctor is a level headed farmer who watches as his friends and their wives are accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death, that is, until his own wife is accused. Using these foil characters, Arthur Miller exemplifies the difference between people who are weak minded and cowardly versus people who are strong-minded and brave.
Abigail’s greed was the most destructive to the outcome of this story. She destroyed most people’s reputation in the town. Many innocent people are hanged for crimes they did not commit including John Proctor. Abigail wanted to get rid of John Proctor’s wife Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was charged with consorting with the devil. Abigail new the punishment for the crime of witchcraft was hanging and carried out her accusation so that she and Jon could “dance upon her grave together.”(Act 3) John Proctor is also charged with witch craft; he had a choice of lying about consorting with the devil or keeping his integrity.
At the same time those afflicted women could have been the ones that are hiding to not get caught or accused of witchcraft as mentioned in Document 7, “They soon… became intoxicated…by the terribleness of their imposture, and were swept along the frenzy they had occasioned…”. Another cause was between the Puritans and their belief in predestination, which was the idea that God elects before birth who will go to Heaven and who will not, and they were also fundamentalists, who believed every word in the Bible was true. With that said, in Exodus 22:18 states that people should not allow witches to be alive, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Doc 1). The Puritans will obviously take actions, and follow as the
The Puritans in The Scarlet Letter ironically condemn Hester by hypocritically reacting to her sin and by foolishly praising the preacher who actually committed adultery with her. Once the puritans realize Hester was pregnant, they began to condemn her and give her harsh consequences. All together they banished her from the town and tried to take her daughter away from her. These consequences were given hypocritically since the majority of the town participated in witchcraft. The town, in order to justify it's sin, acted like they actually held standards by harshly attacking Hester's sin.
I don’t think that even the Christian and pagan action came to Grendel’s mother mind. Grendel’s mother had a delinquent son and knew he was bad, she didn’t want him dead. Grendel’s death was punishment for all the previously committed murders. This proves the case of the phrase that society use ‘only a mother could
Not only did Abigail accuse innocent people of witchcraft, but also had an affair with a married man, John Proctor. In the late 1600’s it was said to be a sin to sleep with a married man. Because of her affair with John Proctor, I think that Abigail ended up falling in love with John and wanted his wife out of the picture, hence the reason why she falsely accuses her. “I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretense Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men!
In the early Modern Ages, scholars overwhelmingly rejected the notion of witchcraft, as this would have threatened the monopoly of the Church[3]. The construction and imposition of witchcraft as a crime started in the 1480s. The Malleus Maleficarum written by Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger[4]were the “instigators of the systematic persecution”[5] of witches. Malleus argued that witches were supported by the devil (with whom they had a sexual compact) and attended Sabbaths[6]; making witchcraft a heresy. These ideas were then widely supported and imposed upon people by theologians and lawyers[7] making diabolic interference central to the idea of witchcraft.