Revenge. Revenge caused them to be feared of people being witches. This is because some people might have had a conflict, and they maybe still do not like each other. Witches then were an excuse for people to blame their problems on. They think that the witches were causing these problems so in order to “get back” at them, they would blame everything on them.
Since the witchcraft was such a confusing and terrible time for everyone, people were getting accused by these girls all the time, a lot of the time the court and the church would look for signs of being a witch, like making the accused take the test i talked about before but sometimes they just trusted the girls and didn't look for evidence at all. They just convicted the person to be a witch. This seems crazy to me because it doesn't seem fair at all, they didn't even have a chance to prove that they were innocent, instead they were automatically a witch. The Salem Witch Trials finally came to an end when the whole town felt that it was getting way out of control.
The reason for this is the “accusers” might have wanted to be with the husbands of the women they accused of witchcraft. Being with the man they wished to be with would mean they would have a name that was known in town and possibly money. Jealousy is a strong force and the girls who accused people of witchcraft knew how to use it to get what they wanted. The girls manipulated the minds of the judges by stating they had seen the wife of a man with the Devil. But also one man, Thomas Putnam, was accused of murdering his neighbors for their land, which might have actually been jealousy.
By the end of the witch trials, she would accuse sixty-two people. However, it wasn’t totally her fault; the standards put onto children were immense, and this was her way of relieving the
In doing so, the court believed this and she was found guilty of witchcraft. She was put to jail and is now serving a sentence. Rebecca Nurse is not the only character who was judged unfairly in this play. In my lifetime, I have been judged unfairly many times.
But it didn’t really matter what they said or did, their fate was sealed. One can conclude that the witch accusations were caused by revenge, boredom, and a pandemic-like spreading of symptoms. First of all, revenge is one of the top reasons for the witch trials. For example, the Nurses and Putnams, two very rich families, had gotten in a malicious legal battle
Most accused witches seemed doomed from the start because the people who questioned the witches had already predetermined what they thought was the verdict. "Only one suspect was brought into the room at a time, but even before the defendants spoke a single word, it was obvious that the magistrates thought all three of them were witches" (Schanzer 32). Even when the defendant got any sort of protection, the judges overlooked the real evidence and continued to believe the fake stuff. " Only one person came forth to defend Good. When one of the girls accused Good of stabbing her with a knife and produced a broken knife tip to prove it, a man came forward showing that it was his knife from which the tip had been broken in the presence of the accusing girl.
When they first began their fits they refused to reveal who the witch was, but when they did the first person they accused was Tituba. The people did not find it hard to believe that Tituba was a witch because she had earlier said that she believed in witchcraft. In February the girls accused two more women of witchcraft, Sarah Osburn and Sarah Good. Osburn and Good were two older women that no one in the village seemed to like very much so it wasn’t hard for the villagers to believe they were witches as well. Sarah Good was a woman who aggressively begged for food and if she was refused she would turn away cursing and Sarah Osburn created scandal after her husband died by purchasing an Irish immigrant and living with him as husband and wife before getting
This was because witchcraft was a crime punishable by death in America. Soon, one hundred and fifty people were imprisoned. This does not include the sixteen people that were hanged in New England (Boyer). People were being questioned because of the assumptions made as being a witch. This search included Sarah Good’s four year old daughter, Dorothy (Blumberg).
While reading the story you view many different examples of betrayal that were done during the times of the witch trial. For instance in Act 1 of The Crucible we read about Abigail telling Reverend Hale that Tituba made
She is mean. She shows that she is mean by threatening the lives of the girls if they say anything about witchcraft. “Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you” (act 1 line 460) She also shows that she is mean when she is coping Mary making the pastors in the court believe that Mary is a witch. “
The people believed that the word of God was the only way of life and needed to be followed. They believed that the witches were trying to “breakdown God.” Any person who was accused of being a witch was first checked to see if they had the devils mark and if they did they would poke it with a needle and if they showed pain or drew blood then it wasn’t considered the devil’s mark. They were put on trial but no one ever wanted to stand up for the witches because if you did then you would then get interrogated and people then thought you were a witch also. Many people believe that things are good how they are but they don’t realize how much more needs to still be done.
This is cruel because a lot of innocent people were hung for witchcraft. The Salem Witch Trial is what it is called now in history. Everybody suffered due to it and the town fell apart. Everybody trusted nobody, they all did not like the justice system for what they were doing, and loving family members were lost due to this monstrosity. This could be used as an example of how fear can lead to brutality and ruin
“Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you,” (Act I, 160). She was the first person in the play to accuse a person of seeing people summon spirits of the Devil. This caused a massive, wide-scale witch hunt to take place; families torn apart, mothers, fathers, and even children murdered for what was considered to be the greater good. Now, others began to accuse people of witchcraft and people who had been lifelong friends to each other now had no choice other than to point fingers at each other or be put to death. Widespread panic and unreasonable action was sweeping through everyone in Salem, all because of a little lie by
Her voluminous costume also makes the Wicked Witch seem larger and more frightening than she is. Seeing these two characters in two very different costumes before they even speak a word helps the viewers to already get a feel for who they are and what is maybe to
