Notion Of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events: Summary

In the Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events, Pritchard begins the second chapter with the statement, “Witches clearly cannot exist” (Pritchard 1). Continuing with explaining that for the Azande, witchcraft was embedded in their daily lives. Evan Pritchard explains that witchcraft is “to Azande an ordinary and not an extraordinary... event” (Pritchard 9). In other words, the Azande perceive “unfortunate events” due to witchcraft and not by natural causes. An example of this is death, the Azande see death as an event caused by the dying person being bewitched. Similar to the belief of ghostly being, without physically seeing one, because of the fact they saw something move or the person felt a draft. His conclusion on the witchcraft

He spent time observing the Azande to see how witchcraft affected their daily lives. However, he could not speak to them of why they believed in witchcraft because it seemed as something normal which need not explain. Also, Pritchard states, “They do not profess to understand witchcraft entirely. They know that it exists and works evil” (Pritchard 9).In other words, the Azande believe it is there and it being a normal occurrence. An example is when a person is ill the Azande believe it is witchcraft; however, it may be caused due to an undiagnosed disease (Strange Beliefs: Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard). This is similar to how a person believes they are sick but do not go to the doctor’s office and searches the internet to find out what they have come down with. Looking for remedies and using them as what was found on the internet that was claimed to cure

For example, Pritchard uses the analogy, “When a girl smashes her water-pot or a boy forgets to close the door of the henhouse at night they will be admonished severely by their parents for stupidity” (Pritchard 8). He uses this analogy to explain how the Azande may blame the children’s “stupidity” to be witchcraft. While, Wittgenstein would analogies such as, “a good chair or a bad chair” to explain how the chair “serves a certain predetermined purpose” (Wittgenstein 3). However, Pritchard does not go into deep of why the subject does what they do. As for Wittgenstein, he explains in full detail of what he is thinking and reasons why this may be. After Wittgenstein makes his analogy on the “good” chair he continues and uses it as a base, connecting everything to it. As for Pritchard he just uses his analogy to help the reader understand that bit of information he provided before he said