The accusations were usually made by the alleged victims themselves, rather than by priests, lords, judges, or other elites. Successful prosecution of one witch sometimes led to a local hunt for others, but larger hunts and regional panics were confined (with some exceptions) to the years from the 1590s to 1640s. He presents a situation of opposition where some characters are, In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, several innocent citizens were killed or harmed in some way for unjustified reasons. Like the Spanish colonies, the English colonies repeated the European stereotype with a few minor differences. Although the proportions varied according to region and time, on the whole about three-fourths of convicted witches were female. Moving crabwise across the profusion of evidence, I sensed that I had at last found something of myself in it, and a play began to accumulate around this man. all rights reserved, History U: Courses for High School Students, Cotton Mathers account of the Salem witch trials, 1693, Located on the lower level of the New-York Historical Society. The third girl was Ann Putnam Jr., who was the daughter of a key supporter of Rev. Girls had specific roles in society and were expected to follow the rules of the church without question, so when they acted out and danced or strayed from the church, chaos was unavoidable. ", Latest answer posted October 02, 2020 at 10:46:39 AM. Where previously it was believed no mortal could control the weather, European Christians gradually came to believe that witches could. Children were often accusers (as they were at Salem), but they were sometimes also among the accused. Because of the continuity of witch trials with those for heresy, it is impossible to say when the first witch trial occurred. Rev. Why did Arthur Miller write The Crucible? John Indian, through the trials, also had a number of fits when present for the examination of accused witches. Although these figures are alarming, they do not remotely approach the feverishly exaggerated claims of some 20th-century writers. Lewis, Jone Johnson. The Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation heightened the fear of witchcraft by promoting the idea of personal piety (the individual alone with his or her Bible and God), which enhanced individualism while downplaying community. In the 11th century attitudes toward witchcraft and sorcery began to change, a process that would radically transform the Western perception of witchcraft and associate it with heresy and the Devil. She is a tour guide in Glasnevin Cemetery Museum, a popular historical site in Dublin, and a published fiction and non-fiction writer. Part of their belief system was awareness for anything "evil". Accusations similar to those expressed by the ancient Syrians and early Christians appeared again in the Middle Ages. The differences between inhabitants were expressed as a battle between good and evil. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, what does the author mean by his statement that "the Salem tragedy developed from a paradox"? In the article Are You Now or Were You Ever, Arthur Miller claims that the McCarthy era and the Salem witch trials were similar and he does this through his choice of diction, figurative language, and rhetorical questions. These allegations would have important implications for the future because they were part of a broader pattern of hostility toward and persecution of marginalized groups. In both The Crucible and in modern day witch hunts, witch hunts are caused out of fear or for personal gain. The latter was the greatest evil of the system, for a victim might be forced to name acquaintances, who were in turn coerced into naming others, creating a long chain of accusations. Lewis, Jone Johnson. Moreover, just as the growth of literacy and of reading the Bible helped spread dissent, so did they provoke resistance and fear. It was also believed that they rode through the air at night to sabbats (secret meetings), where they engaged in sexual orgies and even had sex with Satan; that they changed shapes (from human to animal or from one human form to another); that they often had familiar spirits in the form of animals; and that they kidnapped and murdered children for the purpose of eating them or rendering their fat for magical ointments. Since 1970 careful research has elucidated law codes and theological treatises from the era of the witch hunts and uncovered much information about how fear, accusations, and prosecutions actually occurred in villages, local law courts, and courts of appeal in Roman Catholic and Protestant cultures in western Europe. One was Elizabeth (Betty) Parris, the 9-year-old daughter of Rev. Also the fact people would accuse people of witchcraft which would then accuse other people of witchcraft and etc. No wonder the term witch hunt has entered common political parlance to describe such campaigns as that of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his attempt to root out communists in the United States in the 1950s. Salem is an early example of what Miller saw around him and personally experienced in the 1950sthe communist witch hunts conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy. In 1691, a group of girls from Salem, Massachusetts accused an Indian slave named Tituba of witchcraft, igniting a hunt for witches that left 19 men and women hanged, one man pressed to death, and over 150 more people in prison awaiting a trial. Another Information that imparted Arthur Miller . Miller supports his claim by describing how the young girls of Salem blame the outsiders of their town of witchcraft. Miller completely discounts the idea that these events are caused by supernatural forces, and instead seeks to show how everyday difference between the members of the Salem community and the all-common emotions of anger, envy and greed are responsible. B.A. Tituba was among the first three people accused of being a witch during the Salem witch trials of 1692.
How Does Arthur Miller Use Witch Hunts In The Crucible In Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, witch hunts empowered towns and consumed people's lives with fear. The visible role played by women in some heresies during this period may have contributed to the stereotype of the witch as female. She may have served as a household servant and a companion to Betty. Yet one general explanation is valid: the unique character of the witch hunts was consistent with the prevailing worldview of intelligent, educated, experienced people for more than three centuries. What do the characters in the play believe about witches? There was bad blood between the two women now. Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. It makes one wonder why older men continuously try to have relationships with them, huh? According to Miller, what caused the witch-hunts? On February 29, 1692, an arrest warrant was issued for Tituba in Salem Town. Parris was, at the time he was in New Spain, not yet married and not yet a minister. With tensions running high, many turned to inculcate the more vulnerable members of society. Ecclesiastical and civil authorities usually tried to restrain witch trials and rarely manipulated witch hunts to obtain money or power.
Tituba and The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 - ThoughtCo John Hale, were called in by Parris. Updated on January 31, 2020. No satisfactory explanation for the preponderance of women among the accused has appeared. The "parochial snobbery" as well as a "predilection for minding other people's businesses" helped to make Salem a prime place for the trials to emerge and the charges of witchcraft to emerge on such a wide scale. The author writes in a satiric tone to mock the McCarthyism era of communism. Very few accusations went beyond the village level. They could now publicly state their own iniquities and were praised for seeking purification. The legal use of torture declined in the 17th and 18th centuries, and there was a general retreat from religious intensity following the wars of religion (from the 1560s to 1640s). To every guy out there today whose greatest concern is being falsely accused, youve been manipulated by a frustrated playwright into genuinely believing that being callous and abusive with women dont have consequences. . Maleficium was a threat not only to individuals but also to public order, for a community wracked by suspicions about witches could split asunder. He says they were caused by everyone being paranoid of the witches. They were Christians who originally left England because they felt persecuted. Aligns with CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.5- Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging. In the article Fighting Modern-Day Witch Hunts In Indias Remote Northeast by Vikram Singh, who works for the New York Times, she, In Arthur Millers The Crucible, he shows a mass hysteria that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. In the play, the people of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 sought to destroy the devils influence by seeking and destroying witches. This was a time when paranoia, hysteria, and deceit gripped the Puritan towns of New England. It might have been as simple as one person blaming his misfortune on another. In 1374 Pope Gregory XI declared that all magic was done with the aid of demons and thus was open to prosecution for heresy. She would also have likely been aware of the unrest in the community when raids were launched in New England, starting up again in 1689 (and called King William's War), with New France using both French soldiers and local Native Americans to fight against the English colonists. The settlers of New England faced innumerable struggles and hardships. []. But there was one entry in Upham in which the thousands of pieces I had come across were jogged into place. A detailed study of a timeline accompanies their close reading of The Crucible. Whether she was aware of Rev. Those include fear, personal motives, unfair treatment of the accused, and accusers. Arthur Miller includes Tituba in his 1952 play, "The Crucible", which uses the Salem witch trials as a metaphor or analogy to 20th century McCarthyism, the pursuit, and "blacklisting" of accused Communists. The Salem witch trials and McCarthyism have an uncanny relation to one another. The economic theories of the Salem events tend to be two-fold: the first attributes the witchcraft trials to an economic downturn caused by a "little ice age" that lasted from 1550-1800; the second cites socioeconomic issues in Salem itself.
Historical Context Essay: Arthur Miller and the Red Scare What is it about this particular tragic segment of American history that appeals to the creative imagination? *** Beyond Arthur Millers The Crucible, numerous dramatic presentations offer insights into irrational human fear. Indeed, Germany, one of the central countries of the Protestant Reformation, is often referred to as the focal point of the European witch hunts. Cotton Mather, a prolific author and well-known preacher, wrote this account in 1693, a year after the trials ended. Arthur Miller's . Miller wrote. The accusations of witchcraft - at a time when many peope did actively believe in the supernatural - become both a means and a cover for the pursuit of private conflicts. Witch trials continued through the 14th and early 15th centuries, but with great inconsistency according to time and place. In early 1692, three girls with connections to the Parris household began to exhibit strange behavior. By Katie BrownCurrent PhD Biblical Studies, BA Classics and ReligionKatie is a postgraduate research student in Trinity College Dublin, where she also received her Bachelor's Degree in Classical Civilisation and World Religions and Theology. Parris promised to pay the fee to allow Tituba to be released from prison. Drawing on research on the witch trials he had conducted while an undergraduate, Miller composed The Crucible in the early 1950s. What caused them? In January of 1692, nine-year-old Betty Parris and eleven-year-old Abigail Williams, the daughter and niece of Salem Village minister Reverend Samuel Parris, suddenly feel ill. Making strange, foreign sounds, huddling under furniture, and clutching their heads, the girls' symptoms were alarming and astounding to .
A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials - Smithsonian Magazine Many teachers use The Crucible alongside their discussion of McCarthyism. Current PhD Biblical Studies, BA Classics and Religion.
Examples Of The Salem Witch Hunt In The Crucible | ipl.org Arthur Miller's allegorical play, The Crucible, was written in 1956 about the historic witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts. Sermons and didactic treatises, including devil books warning of Satans power, spread both the terror of Satan and the corresponding frantic need to purge society of him. Set in the 17th century The Crucible told the story of a town that ensued a hunt for witches, caused by the accusations of Salem 's young girls and their ring leader Abigail Williams. They believed that witches were quite real and a gateway into the dark side, the Devil and all that. Throughout the story people accuse others of being witches or being involved with witchcraft so they could be hanged. Upon these people, the blame could be laid for all hardships endured by Puritan society. Also, the clergy in authority expounded punishment, rather than penitence and forgiveness, for those deemed witches.
Arthur Miller and The Crucible Background - SparkNotes However, it must be taken into account that different regions experienced a flare-up of witch trials for a variety of localized reasons. In this remarkably observed gesture of a troubled young girl, I believed, a play became possible. According to author Carol F. Karlsen . Scrutiny of Miller's historical sources, which include biographies of key players (the accused and the accusers) and primary source transcripts of the Salem witch trials themselvesgive students a chance to trace the events embellished in the play back to historical Salem. Mather and his fellow New Englanders believed that God directly intervened in the establishment of the colonies and that the New World was formerly the Devils territory. There have been many different "witch hunts" that have happened since 1692, that have shaped our world. A neighbor of the Parris family, Mary Sibley, advised John Indian and possibly Tituba to make a witch's cake to identify the cause of the initial "afflictions" of Betty Parris and Abigail Williams. why did the witch-hunts occur? eNotes Editorial, 6 June 2016, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-reasons-miller-gives-salem-witch-hunts-360670. By directing blame for misfortune upon others, various populations across Europe succumbed to the mass panic and collective fear ignited by those in authority. Again, the so-called witches made for the perfect scapegoats. They believed in short that they held in their steady hands the candle that would light the world. Miller echoes many of McCarthys ideas such as a war between two ideologies, a letter of names, and a society destroyed by enemies from within. Fear, accusations, and doing things for personal gain is a natural human instinct. Crude practices such as pricking witches to see whether the Devil had desensitized them to pain; searching for the devils mark, an oddly-shaped mole or wart; or swimming (throwing the accused into a pond; if she sank, she was innocent because the water accepted her) occurred on the local level. This is highly similar to the homicides that led to rise of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. Although many witchcraft theorists were not deeply misogynist, many others were, notably the authors of the infamous Malleus maleficarum. Poor agricultural success, conflict with Native Americans, tension between different communities, and poverty were not what the Puritan communities envisioned when they set out. Both he and you are wrong. He has wanted his Incarnate Legions to Persecute us, as the People of God have in the other Hemisphere been Persecuted: he has therefore drawn forth his more spiritual ones to make an attacque upon us. If theyre that much trouble? With our Essay Lab, you can create a customized outline within seconds to get started on your essay right away. The decline of witch hunts, like their origins, was gradual. Through works of literature such as the Malleus, witches were broadly blamed for the effects of the Little Ice Age, thus becoming a scapegoat across the Western world. In his commentary, Miller names a variety of reasons for the injustice and atrocity which were the essential elements of the witch-hunts. Secondly, Miller states that 'The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom.' Some may say it was just a part of war; however, it's much more than that. Cotton Mathers account of the witch trials reinforced colonial New Englanders view of themselves as a chosen generation of men. The inevitable need for a scapegoat, for someone to hold accountable for misfortune, seems to be ingrained in the human psyche. Explanations of the witch hunts continue to vary, but recent research has shown some of these theories to be improbable or of negligible value. Another approach would be to have students read and analyze the following informational text by Miller, which recollects his personal experience with the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956 when he refused to name names. Miller was convicted June 1, 1957 for contempt of Congress. The figurative 'witch hunt' of McCarthyism becomes literal in Miller's play, which is .
Arthur Miller's The Crucible: Witch Hunting for the Classroom In the 16th and 17th centuries, they left Britain for the New World to establish a society that, they believed, reflected their religious beliefs. He mentions that, firstly, the witch-hunts developed from what he names a 'paradox.' In his telling, witch hunts are perpetrated by the marginalized rather than upon them, since, when sex is involved, women are inclined toward group-malice, sexual irrationality, and wholesale invention. Instead, they were just one very small chapter in the much longer story of the witch hunts that took place all across Europe and America in the early modern period, with the European witch hunts reaching a height between 1560 and 1650. The Reformation, Counter-Reformation, war, conflict, climate change, and economic recession are all some of the factors that influenced the witch hunts across the two continents in various ways. The effects of conflicts such as the Thirty Years War were exacerbated by the drastic Little Ice Age with which they coincided, especially in regard to the European witch hunts. Indeed, Miller uses witchcraft and the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for situations wherein those who are in power accuse those who challenge them of suspect behavior in order to destroy them. It was from a report written by the Reverend Samuel Parris, who was one of the chief instigators of the witch-hunt. Senator McCarthy rose to power during this time by creating an atmosphere of fear and suspicion based on false claims of communist activity. Witch hunting became a prime service for attracting and appeasing the masses. Miller's extensive stage directions suggest several reasons why the Witch Trials had to take place in Salem. These witch hunts warn against collective thought and unjust persecution and even to this day provide a useful and relevant metaphor for all those who believe themselves victims of unjustified outrage. Local priests and judges, though seldom experts in either theology or law, were nonetheless part of a culture that believed in the reality of witches as much as modern society believes in the reality of molecules. From the 14th through the 18th century, witches were believed to repudiate Jesus Christ, to worship the Devil and make pacts with him (selling ones soul in exchange for Satans assistance), to employ demons to accomplish magical deeds, and to desecrate the crucifix and the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist (Holy Communion). We now know that some of the accused were pre-teens. The story in The Crucible begins with how the paranoia and the following witch hunt started in Salem. Aligns with CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.7- Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. Let us know your assignment type and we'll make sure to get you exactly the kind of answer you need. One theory which could explain the apparent madness of the trial and judicial hangings may be found in the bread the settlers were eating. Elizabeth Proctor had been the orphaned Abigails mistress, and they had lived together in the same small house until Elizabeth fired the girl. The largest account of witch trials as well as deaths by witch trials occurred in Salem, a village heavily populated with the Puritans.
The witches and judges of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" Folklore and accounts of trials indicate that a woman who was not protected by a male family member might have been the most likely candidate for an accusation, but the evidence is inconclusive. "It would probably never have occurred to me to write a play about the Salem witch trials of 1692 had I not seen some astonishing correspondences with that calamity in the America of the late 40s and early 50s. In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the weak people are taunted by the stronger people to give in to admitting to witchcraft. However, the general consensus is that the witch hunts spanning the two continents resulted in the deaths of between 40,000 and 60,000 people. Heres What We Know, INTERVIEW: Cary Elwes Understands the Assignment of Guy Ritchie Movies for Operation Fortune, Walgreens Caves to Republicans, Limits Sales of Another Reproductive Healthcare Item, Florida Man Fulfills His Destiny as a Netflix Crime Series, The 13 Best Ted Lasso Quotes to Read When the World Has Made You Feel Weary. How Rye Bread May Have Caused the Salem Witch Trials. Tituba served as a housekeeper. People such as John Proctor, Giles and Martha Corey, and Rebecca Nurse epitomize this desire for individuality. This is also the place Arthur Miller has written about in his book The Crucible. The Salem witch trials of the 1690's portrayed by Millers the Crucible parallel The Red Scare of 1920's, both events revolve around the fear of foreign ideology causing hysteria. Nevertheless, the reasons for the decline in the witch hunts are as difficult to discern as the reasons for their origins. I had not approached the witchcraft out of nowhere or from purely social and political considerations. In that examination, Tituba confessed, naming both Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good as witches and describing their spectral movements, including meeting with the devil. The term 'witch-hunt' has become entrenched in our vocabulary and our consciousness to mean, metaphorically, any act which purposely seeks out to punish those who hold unpopular views or. How does he describe the witch-hunts. She included in her confession complicated tales of witchcraftall compatible with English folk beliefs, not voodoo as some have alleged. Furthermore, people could now freely express their hatreds for neighbors and take vengeance under the the guise of an attempt to identify those who communed with the devil. Miller transforms Tituba, a young Native American girl, into an African slave who led a group of young women into the forest to participate in magic rites. The Puritans were marked by inflexibility and extremism.
What was it about the time period that made such hysteria, and ultimately tragedy, possible. A bolt of lightning releases the handcuffs on a woman accused of being a witch and strikes down her inquisitor in this late nineteenth-century lithograph of a colonial-era trial. Because accusations and trials of witches took place in both ecclesiastical and secular courts, the law played at least as important a role as religion in the witch hunts. Margaret Atwoods theory that societies under a lot of stress will give in to a person or a group proves a struggle between weak people giving into stronger people.