In the 1950's, however, people were terrified of the red Communists coming to take over their beloved country. Senator McCarthy was the one taking out other people in the govornment that he suspected to be a communist via inprisonment. The witch trials and McCarthyism started differently as well, for one started with a group of young girls' voodoo practice and the other started when senator McCarthy was trying to win an election and took advantage of the peoples feelings toward the "Red scare." A lot of the evil things McCarthyism did were private and behind closed govornment doors. During the Salem Witch Trials the accused people were forced to make a public confession and be killed in front of their family and friends.
However, beneath that veneer of perfection, there was surely some tension going on between the villagers. In document I, it shows that almost all the people that were accused of being witches lived on the east side of Salem, whereas all the people that accused them in the first place lived to the west of the village. The defenders were also seen to be living nearer to the accused ones. This shows that chances are, the accusers had something significant against the other people. Perhaps they were too wealthy and wanted to feel more authoritative and powerful?
Another person, named Samuel Sewall, wrote a petition about the Salem witchcraft hysteria beliefs. In his petition, he describes how God should repent his sins, and he asks for forgiveness because he realizes that the witchcraft in Salem did not exist (Document A). Not only did the Salem witchcraft affect beliefs/morals, but it also affected justice. The Salem witchcraft hysteria of 1692 had a significant effect on justice in America because it changed the thought of many laws and the way people were
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
Socially, slaves were bottom the class pyramid and were treated bad and this caused them to revolt. In Salem, Massachusetts the imagination and communication played a huge role in witchcraft trials. The talk of the devil and witches grew and soon any thingthat is abnormal or seen as not common was seen as a characteristic of the devil or a witch.Politically, strange and harsh laws were made in the colonies. Slavery was seen as white man¶s burden and how Africans were uncivilized and those coming to their plantations and working for them will make them civilized. In Salem, Massachusetts strange laws were made when thehunting of ³witches´ began.
From the late 1400’s to the 1700’s, a witch craze spread throughout Europe, resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 ‘witches’. Though witches were persecuted all throughout Europe, trials were most popular in Western Europe; torture was a common practice during these trials. These persecutions were mostly popular in Europe but, they spread to America and later to parts of Africa. Through the evidence provided by testimonies of witnesses and statistics, the three major reasons for the persecution of witches were social prejudices, economic greed and religious beliefs. Though the accused witches were not strictly female, the accused were predominantly women and more specifically older women, older women were seen as more fragile and impressionable so the devil could convince them to do his dirty work quiet easily.POV Two Dominican monks, Kramer and Sprenger, wrote a handbook used to identify witches by the Inquisition.
The Puritan community in The Crucible was vulnerable in many ways and susceptible to irrational and panicky accusations of the Salem Witch Hunts because of their strict and constricting ways. The children in the community are treated very poorly and less than everyone else in the town. As the Salem Witch Hunts were essentially started by the children the fact that they were treated as lesser beings contributed to the communities demise. “He (Reverend Parris) regarded them as young adults, an until this strange crisis he, like the rest of Salem, never conceived that the children were anything but thankful for being permitted to walk straight, eyes slightly lowered, arms at their sides, and mouths shut until bidden to speak,” (Miller 3). Miller foreshadows the Witch Hunts to come.
Since the low class poor people are not usually educated, they often easily “pushed” into the crimes by the high class people. Usually the upper class people are invisible and at the end the poor is the ones who get blamed. Certainly the rich benefit more than the poor. That has always and will always be the case in every society the world has known. Very often the rich push the poor by removing workers rights, by limiting corporate liability, by instigating war.
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.
The Times of the Renaissance Life before the Renaissance was a very dark life. It had a lot of suffering and was religious centered. There were a lot of people who could not write and read, and the Black Death came along, which wiped out a lot of the populations in the towns and cities. When the Renaissance came, however, it was a very big revolution in history and forever changed the people’s lives, their thoughts and the Arts. Life before the Renaissance (pre 1350) was a very unpleasant time.