For many peopleespecially New Englanders (wicked or not) and fans of Daniel Day-Lewis or Winona Ryder (stars of the 1996 movie version of Arthur Miller's The Crucible)17th-century Salem, Massachusetts, comes to mind when they hear the word witch hunt.The persecution of witches goes back to ancient times, but it was during the 16th and 17th centuries that witch hunts intensified. Latest answer posted April 17, 2020 at 1:25:04 AM. It certainly was not deemed to be a threat, even by the leaders of the Catholic Church, who simply denied its existence. The Salem witch trials, which resulted in several deaths in 1692 in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts, have never been adequately explained. Texas Zero Property Tax Bill Has Extreme, Discriminatory Catches, Eurovision 2023 Tickets Announced on Ticketmaster, Celebrating Womens History With Qiu Jin, Chinese Revolutionary, The Penguin Tells a Batverse Scarface Story. Although accusations of witchcraft in contemporary cultures provide a means to express or resolve social tensions, these accusations had different consequences in premodern Western society where the mixture of irrational fear and a persecuting mentality led to the emergence of the witch hunts. They simply used accusations of witchcraft and magic to prove their moral and doctrinal superiority over the other side. It would, over time, grow to be synonymous with mass hysteria, panic, and paranoia, referenced by those who believe themselves to be victims of unjust persecution; Salem. *** Beyond Arthur Millers The Crucible, numerous dramatic presentations offer insights into irrational human fear. At first, this lead society to a poor place of illogical reasoning and punishments, but overall gave a lasting lesson of how to deal with conflicts in the future. It was also, and as importantly, a long overdue opportunity for every-one so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims.'. Witchcraft: What Caused the Witch-Hunts in Early Modern Europe 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. Moreover, the evidence does not indicate a close correlation between socioeconomic tension and witchcraft, though agrarian crises seem to have had some effect. 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. If theyre that much trouble? In that examination, Tituba confessed, naming both Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good as witches and describing their spectral movements, including meeting with the devil. Tituba is depicted in Miller's drama as initiating witchcraft as play among the girls of Salem Village. Similar to The Crucible , a majority of the characters reacted the way they did out of fear. This is also the place Arthur Miller has written about in his book The Crucible. The witch-hunt also provided those who were greedy for land, such as the Putnams, to seek satisfaction. The story of that peripheral village is one that has lodged itself into the cultural mindset of people everywhere as a cautionary tale against the dangers of extremism, groupthink, and false accusations, perhaps calling to mind Arthur Millers The Crucible or Cold War era McCarthyism. My basic need was to respond to a phenomenon which, with only small exaggeration, one could say paralyzed a whole generation and in a short time dried up the habits of trust and toleration in public discourse. Like the Spanish colonies, the English colonies repeated the European stereotype with a few minor differences. In the play, the people of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 sought to destroy the devils influence by seeking and destroying witches. Torture was not allowed in witch cases in Italy or Spain, but where used it often led to convictions and the identification of supposed accomplices. 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. Students put themselves in the place of the playwright to answer: Aligns with CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.3- Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine which explanation best accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain. The Salem Witch Trials and Ergot: Mushroom Madness? In Greco-Roman civilization, Dionysiac worship included meeting underground at night, sacrificing animals, practicing orgies, feasting, and drinking. There is no source before the latter half of the 19th century, including transcripts of testimony in the examinations and trials, that supports the idea that Tituba and the girls who were accusers practiced any magic together. Even though the clergy and judges in the Middle Ages were skeptical of accusations of witchcraft, the period 130030 can be seen as the beginning of witch trials. When a local doctor diagnosed the girls as suffering from the malevolent effects of the supernatural, they set in motion a series of events that would irrevocably alter the course of American cultural, judicial, and political history. One of the most important aspects of the hunts remains unexplained. Both he and you are wrong. The so-called 'confessions' by many of the accusers were an effort for them to purge themselves, as it were, of sin and thus find redemption. The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling., Have a tip we should know? Parris. In counties divided along religious lines, such as Germany, however, there were many trials and executions. Parris promised to pay the fee to allow Tituba to be released from prison. Two of the accused women confessed to being witches and were reprievedparadoxically, if you admitted to being a witch, you were freed. The Rev. This was a Puritan village. Why did Arthur Miller write The Crucible? Still creepy, but slightly less creepy? 'The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression. Whether she was aware of Rev. For example, if something bad happened to John that could not be readily explained, and if John felt that Richard disliked him, John may have suspected Richard of harming him by occult means. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/tituba-salem-witch-trials-3530572. In Arthur Millers play, The Crucible, witch hunts empowered towns and consumed peoples lives with fear. The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 and recounts one such witch hunt. In early 1692, three girls with connections to the Parris household began to exhibit strange behavior. Salem witch trials | History, Summary, Location, Causes, Victims Through Abigails and Titubas actions of self-protection at the expense of others, Miller reveals the dangers of mass hysteria and its motivation towards self-preservation and false accusations. These accusations would also be made by the Romans against the Christians, by early Christians against heretics (dissenters from the core Christianity of the period) and Jews, by later Christians against witches, and, as late as the 20th century, by Protestants against Catholics. The witch hunts provided this outlet. A witch hunt is seen as an intensive effort to discover and expose disloyalty, subversion, dishonesty, or the like, usually based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence. When Samuel Parris moved to Boston from New Spain, he brought Tituba,John Indian, and a young boy with him as enslaved persons forced to work in a household. Witches sought to gain or preserve health, to acquire or retain property, to protect against natural disasters or evil spirits, to help friends, and to seek revenge. Indeed, Germany, one of the central countries of the Protestant Reformation, is often referred to as the focal point of the European witch hunts. The emphasis on personal piety exacerbated the rigid characterization of people as either good or bad. It also aggravated feelings of guilt and the psychological tendency to project negative intentions onto others. Accusations originated with the ill-will of the accuser, or, more often, the accusers fear of someone having ill-will toward him. ThoughtCo, Jan. 5, 2021, thoughtco.com/tituba-salem-witch-trials-3530572. In an article called The Single Greatest Witch Hunt in American History, For real by Stacy Schiff, a small village in Massachusetts is being accused of being involved with witchcraft and they are testing people and most are giving into the stronger people just to get out of trouble. Although the proportions varied according to region and time, on the whole about three-fourths of convicted witches were female. Puritan Americans viewed physical wants and desires as a threat to society and work of the Devil. The most common suspicions concerned livestock, crops, storms, disease, property and inheritance, sexual dysfunction or rivalry, family feuds, marital discord, stepparents, sibling rivalries, and local politics. Tituba later testified that she saw visions of the devil and witches swarming. The Salem witch trials proved to be one of the most cruel and fear driven events to ever occur in history. Tituba was among the first three people accused of being a witch during the Salem witch trials of 1692. One interesting connection would be to teach the play along with a film that is very much about McCarthyismJohn Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Explanations of the witch hunts continue to vary, but recent research has shown some of these theories to be improbable or of negligible value. It drew upon preexisting rivalries and disputes within the rapidly growing Massachusetts port town: between urban and rural residents; between wealthier commercial merchants and subsistence-oriented farmers; between Congregationalists and other religious denominationsAnglicans, Baptists, and Quakers; and between American Indians and Englishmen on the frontier. According to Miller, what caused the witch-hunts? Salem, of course, serves as the perfect example of this fanaticism and scapegoating taken to the extreme. Children were often accusers (as they were at Salem), but they were sometimes also among the accused. What was it about the time period that made such hysteria, and ultimately tragedy, possible. And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! Become a subscriber and support the site! After the magistrates finished their examination of Tituba, she was sent to jail. Biography of Elizabeth Parris, Accuser in the Salem Witch Trials, A Brief History of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, Biography of Rebecca Nurse, Victim of the Salem Witch Trials, Profile of Elizabeth How, Persecuted Salem Witch, Rev. Rev. "Tituba and The Salem Witch Trials of 1692." They claim the witches were making them do these bad things. The Puritans were marked by inflexibility and extremism. Written in the early 1950s, Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, during the 1692 Salem witch trials . A Conspectus On 'Witch Hunt' | Merriam-Webster Witch Hunts In Arthur Miller's The Crucible | ipl.org There have been many different "witch hunts" that have happened since 1692, that have shaped our world. They viewed their difficulties through a theological lens, and rather than attribute the blame to chance, misfortune, or simply nature; they thought that they were the Devils fault in collaboration with witches. Rather, recollecting others with distasteful memories such as witchcraft. This is highly similar to the homicides that led to rise of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. In this text, the year is 1692 and the witch trials have diminished and are almost over in Europe. The Crucible by Arthur Miller tells the story of the vindictive town of Salem and its unproportional amount of accusations of witchcraft. 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. 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. It is nearly impossible to determine a correct estimate of how many people were tried and executed for witchcraft during this time. Most Americans knowledge of the seventeenth century comes from heavily mythologized events: the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, Pocahontas purportedly saving Captain John Smith from execution in early Virginia, and the Salem witch trials of 1692. Arthur Miller's . Tituba herself went into a fit, claiming to be afflicted. She confessed to witchcraft and accused others. 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. Or to keep it anonymous, click here. The malevolent sorcery more often associated with men, such as harming crops and livestock, was rarer than that ascribed to women. They were Christians who originally left England because they felt persecuted. Describe a relatively recent historical event that resembles the situation that unfolded in Salem. In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, he shows us four ingredients that create a mass hysteria. It was from a report written by the Reverend Samuel Parris, who was one of the chief instigators of the witch-hunt. It makes one wonder why older men continuously try to have relationships with them, huh? How Arthur Miller Created a Myth of the Male "Witch Hunt - The Mary Sue This helped to feed the paranoia that people felt about one another. Although many witchcraft theorists were not deeply misogynist, many others were, notably the authors of the infamous Malleus maleficarum. Throughout this article, it mentions the persecution of witches today in communities around the globe, mentioning the flashbacks of similar strategies that were used in the past, doing different types of tortures.In Modern days, recent generations have abandoned wonderful traditions. The story in The Crucible begins with how the paranoia and the following witch hunt started in Salem. How Does Arthur Miller Use Witch Hunts In The Crucible They could now publicly state their own iniquities and were praised for seeking purification. Any source of witchcraft must be destroyed . The witch-trials provided release and the outcome was tragically unpleasant. Similarities Between Paranoia And Salem Witch Trials While any number of marginalized groups could, in theory, have served as a scapegoat, the shift in attitudes towards witchcraft as heresy created the conditions that allowed populations to turn upon those accused of witchcraft instead. 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. Its the fact that one person didnt like a certain group of people besides their own so; they felt like they had the right to take away their lives. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. Both of these historic elements, however, were shaped by Miller into a story about a married man tormented by an orphaned, libidinous teenage girl seeking to punish him for a sexual transgression she participated consensually in. Lewis, Jone Johnson. Local courts were more credulous and therefore more likely to be strict and even violent in their treatment of supposed witches than were regional or superior courts. What is the setting for Act 2? The responsibility for the witch hunts can be distributed among theologians, legal theorists, and the practices of secular and ecclesiastical courts. There was bad blood between the two women now. Want more stories like this? Tituba, also known as Tituba Indian, was an enslaved person and servant whose birth and death dates are unknown. . The dramatic changes of the characters show how people in late 1600s managed to get through the accusations of witchcraft and moreover how the accusers and or condemners were able to handle the chaotic event. In The Crucible, with Hales transformation Miller is emphasizing that humanity will always seek redemption, the truth will triumph the lies, and people will constantly try. 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. A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials - Smithsonian Magazine These can all be related back to The Crucible, in the way in which each character experienced. Arthur Miller's The Crucible: Witch Hunting for the Classroom Many innocent people were accused of witchcraft, and while some got out of the situation alive not everyone was as lucky. Rev. Weakness, hypocrisy, vindictiveness: only few of the many words that describe the guilty desires and revenge that lingered among the town of Salem. In the gloomy courthouse there I read the transcripts of the witchcraft trials of 1692, as taken down in a primitive shorthand by ministers who were spelling each other. As the trials wore on, Miller traveled between Massachusetts and New York, researching what he saw as a clear correlation between the Red Scare and the Salem witch trials, both of which depended on a mass hysteria propelled by fear. The Salem witch trials end up being a crucible, that is, a time of great testing and purifying, for the townspeople. Have a tip or story idea? Millers play helps one understand what the Salem Witch Trials did to peoples emotions and mentalities. 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. After an outbreak of hunts in France in 158788, increasingly skeptical judges began a series of restraining reforms marked by the requirement of obligatory appeal to the Parlement in cases of witchcraft, making accusations even more expensive and dangerous. The Crucible: Questions & Answers | SparkNotes 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. Society was undeniably affected by witch hunts, as people did everything in their power to either free themselves from blame or accuse someone else. 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. They may evaluate how each version interprets the source text and debate which aspects of the enacted interpretations of the play best capture a particular character, scene, or theme. In France in 1022 a group of heretics in Orlans was accused of orgy, infanticide, invocations of demons, and use of the dead childrens ashes in a blasphemous parody of the Eucharist. 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. Why were the leaders of Salem's clerical and civil community ready to condemn to death 19 people who refused to acknowledge being witches based on spectral evidence and the hysterical words of young girls? According to a theory posited by economists Leeson and Russ, churches across Europe sought to prove their strength and orthodoxy by relentlessly pursuing witches, demonstrating their prowess against the Devil and his followers. Now, after more than three-quarters of a century of fascination with the great snake of political and social developments, I can see more than a few occasions when we were confronted by the same sensation of having stepped into another age. 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. 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. Witch hunting became a prime service for attracting and appeasing the masses. A fire, a fire is burning! Both the Catholic and Protestant churches, striving to maintain a tight grasp on their clergy, each made clear that they alone could offer a priceless, invaluable commodity; Salvation. This began the Salem Witchcraft Trials. When they did accuse witches, Calvinists generally hunted fellow Calvinists, whereas Roman Catholics largely hunted other Roman Catholics. That Abigail started, in effect, to condemn Elizabeth to death with her touch, then stopped her hand, then went through with it, was quite suddenly the human center of all this turmoil. Some may say it was just a part of war; however, it's much more than that. It was this combination of sorcery and its association with the Devil that made Western witchcraft unique. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller presents a city named Salem, with contradicting people. People demanded one to be hung or burned if the person sinned unless they confessed, turned back around to God, and blamed others for their sin. Vengeful witch hunters left no time to spare when making accusations on their neighborhood enemies. The play results in a mob mentality and hysteria taking over because people believed a lying girl. List their beliefs. During this time, witches and conspiring with the devil were frowned upon by the Puritan church, and were the cause of much fear and suspicion. They believed that witches were quite real and a gateway into the dark side, the Devil and all that. It all began in 1692 and 1693 when Salem in the United States . Tituba's confession, by the rules of the court, kept her from being tried later with others, including those who were eventually found guilty and executed. Throughout the ages, people repeatedly use witch hunts as a method for dealing with issues that are widespread. Fear, hatred, guilt, jealousy, pain, grief, confusion, lust, and hunger are all feelings with one thing in common: They were the driving force that caused a witch-hunt amongst early modern Europeans. In a piece over at The Daily Beast, Maria Dahvana Headley writes about Arthur Millers history with Marilyn Monroe, and how that affected his plays, which perpetuated very specific ideas about women through the American literary canon. As exemplified in the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, witch trials took place. ", EDSITEment is a project of theNational Endowment for the Humanities, Salem Witch Trials: Understanding the Hysteria, Origins of Halloween and the Day of the Dead. Local feuds, for example, could prove detrimental to communities, as neighbors and families turned against each other and condemned their rivals to the pyre and the gallows. We can guess from the circumstances that Parris enslaved Tituba in Barbados, probably when she was 12 or a few years older. As just one example, the king of Italy, Charlemagne, dismissed the concept of witchcraft as a pagan superstition and ordered the death penalty for whoever executed someone because they considered them to be a witch. 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. Miller presents the idea that vengeance ruins peoples lives or reputation so that you can get what you want and be satisfied. For instance Putnam accuses people whose land he covets, while Abigail wants rid of Elizabeth Proctor, her rival for John Proctor's affections. To fully understand what caused the witch-hunt, one must analyze the triggers behind these feelings. She is a former faculty member of the Humanist Institute. Log in here. [emailprotected], For more info, go here: https://teresajusino.com They were a wide cultural, social, political phenomenon. What Caused the Salem Witch Trials? - JSTOR Daily She is a tour guide in Glasnevin Cemetery Museum, a popular historical site in Dublin, and a published fiction and non-fiction writer. For The Crucible, Miller aged Abigail up from her actual age of 11 to a more easily sexualized 17, while aging down John Procter, who was historically 60 at the time the trials went down to 35. English The Crucible Test Flashcards | Quizlet Samuel Parris, later to play a central role in the Salem witch trials of 1692 as the village minister, brought three enslaved persons with him when he came to Massachusetts from New SpainBarbadosin the Caribbean. Someone paid seven pounds for Tituba's release. PDF The Crucible and the reasons for the Salem witch hunt Throughout the story people accuse others of being witches or being involved with witchcraft so they could be hanged. Indeed, the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endured well into the 20th century, when Arthur Miller dramatized the events of 1692 in his play "The Crucible" (1953), using . John Indian, through the trials, also had a number of fits when present for the examination of accused witches. Witch hunts Yet, following the Protestant Reformation, such persecution was widespread. 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 playwright sets that story as the catalyst for a larger, quite literal witch hunt, stoked into a frenzy by a mostly unprovoked confession of witchcraft spoken by a fantastically-minded woman of color whos been practicing sexy voodoo in the woods with the girls of Salem. Drawing on research on the witch trials he had conducted while an undergraduate, Miller composed The Crucible in the early 1950s. Societies under a lot of stress will always give into taunters. Its hard to imagine that there was once a time when witches were not seen as cackling women with pointed hats, black cats, and bubbling cauldrons. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Essential Quotes by Character: John Proctor, Critical Context (Masterplots II: Juvenile & Young Adult Literature Series), Critical Context (Comprehensive Guide to Drama). The Devil, whose central role in witchcraft beliefs made the Western tradition unique, was an absolute reality in both elite and popular culture, and failure to understand the prevailing terror of Satan has misled some modern researchers to regard witchcraft as a cover for political or gender conspiracies. Tituba served as a housekeeper. Their father had, of course, been persecuted in England. The Black Death: Europes Deadliest Pandemic in Human History. No one was safe from persecutions, and the witch hunts for communism began. These courts reduced the number of witch trials significantly by 1600, half a century before legal theory, legislation, and theology began to dismiss the notion of witchcraft in France and other countries. The gradual demise during the late 17th and early 18th century of the previous religious, philosophical, and legal worldview encouraged the ascendancy of an existent but often suppressed skepticism; increasing literacy, mobility, and means of communication set the stage for social acceptance of this changing outlook. Cotton Mather, a prolific author and well-known preacher, wrote this account in 1693, a year after the trials ended. 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. Tituba was among the first three people accused of being a witch during the Salem witch trials of 1692. A character named Abigail in the play acquired immense power, and manipulated the situations in the witch trials. However, many were guilty of caving into their own weaknesses and only feared to be caught in their acts of hypocrisy. One of the most known is The Holocaust that happened during WWII. What is it about this particular tragic segment of American history that appeals to the creative imagination? If witchcraft existed, as people believed it did, then it was an absolute necessity to extirpate it before it destroyed the world.