ipl-logo

Causes Of The Salem Witch Trials Of 1692

1146 Words5 Pages

In Salem, Massachusetts 1692, there were no true witches, meaning no one really signed the devil’s book and went around hurting others; even the ones who confessed to being witches were guiltless (“World”). The witch trials of Salem in the spring of 1692 were a “classic example of scapegoating”(Brooks). Today’s theories as to why these trials happened include epilepsy, boredom, abuse, suffering from a disease from eating rye, or mental sickness (Brooks). As illustrated in The Crucible, social and political tensions contributed to the mass hysteria that resulted in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. There were many factors that sparked the witch trials. When the chaos started, the colony was in need of a new governor, and they did not have a charter …show more content…

Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and other girls danced a devilry dance in the woods, taught to them by Parris’ slave, Tituba (“Witchcraft”). Soon after, they dropped ill and started to act differently with symptoms including “suffering ‘fits’, hiding under furniture, contorting in pain, and experiencing fever” (Brooks). A doctor from the village, William Griggs, was ordered in to check out the girls, and he diagnosed bewitchment. Soon later, other younger girls in the town started to experience identical symptoms. This is when the two girls accused three women of bewitching them, and everything …show more content…

Salem was split into two different factions: Salem Village and Salem Town. Those in Salem Village were usually penniless farmers that lived off tilling crops throughout the rough countryside. Citizens of Salem Town were rich merchants, since there was a thriving harbor town at the center of commerce with London (“World”). Salem Village was also trying to gain their freedom from Salem Town; Salem Village was really apart of Salem Town but was divided because of its financial system and social division. There was also a road called Ipswich Road that ran through Salem Town, close to the center of trade. A lot of residents accused of witchcraft lived by Ipswich Road, whereas the blamers lived in far away farms in Salem Village (“World”). This aspect was very interesting, it could have been because the poor were jealous or they had some other conflicts with the members of Salem

Show More
Related
868 Words | 4 Pages

At a time, Salem Village was a part of the Salem town but then was set apart due to the separation of its economy, class and character Residents of the village were poor farmers who did their part by cultivating crops in the rocky terrain. The town on the other was where the wealthy had lived (so to speak the upper class) and they had been prosperous for the of the trade with London most of people in Salem town were rich merchants. For many years, Salem village, had tried to declare their independence from the town but that was not likely to happen because the town depended on the village for the farmer’s food and their taxes. The Village had also been going to the town mainly because they don’t have their own church (till 1674), but there had also been a parting within the Salem village which was between those lived near the commerce road of the town which had Blacksmiths, carpenters and innkeepers. They had supported and praised the economic changes taking place but the farmers who lived far away from the commerce road believe the worldliness and affluence of Salem town threated there way of life and their Puritan values.

Read More
656 Words | 3 Pages

In this essay, I will be discussing one of the most infamous cases of mass hysteria ever recorded in our nation, the Salem Witch Trials. This tragedy led to 19 hangings and one man being pressed to death in colonial Massachusetts. However, while it was so horrible and gruesome, it had a few national benefits. The most well-known benefit is that it helped completely reshape the American social conscience.

Read More
790 Words | 4 Pages

I founded interesting that the author noticed that the Salem village is the center of the witchcraft misbelief. By everything the evil noted in Goodman Brown; it makes sense that Hawthorne would use a Salem village for this story. In my reflection about the story, I realize that is a place where the events continuously happened because it has a different incidents or devices that are widely found in the literature and recognized as motifs appear. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "

Read More
817 Words | 4 Pages

One of these things is politics. Salem village was into two factions, the traditionalists and the modernizers. The traditionalists were farmers who wanted the old ways of doing things, but the modernizers were business owners who wanted to expand on new things for the village. But the witch trials became a war for these two factions, with both sides accusing each other of witchcraft and using the trials to gain the advantage.

Read More
598 Words | 3 Pages

Imagine being a wealthy 45-year-old woman in 1692 being accused of being a witch. The Salem Witch trials were caused by jealousy, fear, and lying. People believed that the devil was real and that one of his tricks was to enter a normal person 's body and turn that person into a witch. This caused many deaths and became a serious problem in 1692. First of all, jealousy was one of the causes of the Salem witch trials.

Read More
874 Words | 4 Pages

The years between the overthrow of Andros and the arrival of Sir William Phips in 1692 the colony existed on the basis of it’s former charter, former governor Simon Bradstreet served as de-facto ruler and did not have the authority of

Read More
1449 Words | 6 Pages

The accusations of witchcraft continued and started to spread outside Salem Village, some beginning to fill up the jails in Salem and Boston (Ray). The most active accusers resided in Salem Village and, consequentially, they had the most executions which caused the community to greatly suffer. The people of Andover, a town outside

Read More
922 Words | 4 Pages

Salem, Massachusetts, is Infamous in history for the Salem witch trials. A town in despair claims that witchcraft is among them. A theocracy that struck fear into many. In Salem where The Crucible takes place, there is much corruption. People are scared for their life.

Read More
1128 Words | 5 Pages

#1 New York Times Bestselling author Vi Keeland once stated, “Fear does not stop death, it stops life.” A boundless collection of interpretations represent Keeland’s quotation. Yet, only one remains relevant to the topic at hand: in the events that led to the witch trials of 1692, fear posed as a major barricade in Salem Village, Massachusetts, hindering the Puritans’ ability to pursue everyday life. The Salem Witch Trials are one of our nation’s most compellingly intricate, though tragic, phenomenons. Immersed in a dangerously-religious, hysterical atmosphere, a group of young, attention-seeking girls behaved as if cursed by a demonic spirit.

Read More
624 Words | 3 Pages

Salem was a small settlement, every settler knew one another (Miller, Arthur). And when there were whispers of witchcraft, the whispers became loud and public

Read More
440 Words | 2 Pages

Most of the chargers in Salem were leveled by economically desperate farmers against more prosecco merchant families. That is one of many things that caused a lot of conflict between the rich and the poor which was one of the many things that led to the Salem Witch trials. Most of the people and the events that were going on were typically associated with the Salem Witch Trials and were centered in Salem

Read More
772 Words | 4 Pages

Nineteen men and women hung from the tree of destruction, for they were the ornaments of hysteria. New England was supposed to be a land of opportunity for the puritans. During the summer of 1692, Salem Village proved to be a wretched example of this, twenty people were falsely accused of witchcraft, and were accordingly jailed and executed. Salem’s infamy has bewildered many, for nobody knows in entirety what caused the mystery of the Salem witch trials of 1692. The answers as to how it came to be is shrouded in an ever-growing cloak.

Read More
1008 Words | 5 Pages

These refugees were from northern New York, Nova Scotia, and Quebec. The displaced people created a strain on Salem’s resources because they did not have their own resources and they used others. That aggravated existing rivalries between families with ties to the wealth port of Salem. (“Salem Witch Trials”, 1). The first witch case involved Reverend Parris’ daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and his niece Abigail Williams, age 11, in January 1692.

Read More
697 Words | 3 Pages

Analyzing Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's book, Salem Possessed leads to the exploration of the pre-existing social and economic divisions within the Salem Village community, as an entrance point to understanding the accusations of witchcraft in 1692. Salem Village and Salem Town were politically a single unit, but socially as well as economically the two were diverse and because of this, it caused a rivalry. Salem Village had a lot of farmland, poorer people and was more rural as well as conservative. ; the Village was led by the Putnam family. Salem Town was more sophisticated, nautical, and prosperous, with wealthier and more respected people; They were interested in the mercantile and political life of Salem Town and were led primarily

Read More
1223 Words | 5 Pages

Doctor William Griggs declared all those afflicted bewitched and the village agreed with this statement. Indian slave couple Tituba and John were accused in the making of the witch-cake which all those afflicted had had. Tituba was reverend Parris slave, caretaker of Abigail and Betty. February 25 and 28 Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good also accused as the tormentors. The first three women to be accused witches were not originally born in Salem and Tituba was also linked towards the Indian war.

Read More

More about Causes Of The Salem Witch Trials Of 1692

Related Topics

Open Document