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). Moreover, just as the growth of literacy and of reading the Bible helped spread dissent, so did they provoke resistance and fear. 2023. Who are the experts?Our certified Educators are real professors, teachers, and scholars who use their academic expertise to tackle your toughest questions. This was a dissertation that endorsed witch-hunting and is believed to have inspired Shakespeares Macbeth. But there was one entry in Upham in which the thousands of pieces I had come across were jogged into place. Although these figures are alarming, they do not remotely approach the feverishly exaggerated claims of some 20th-century writers. 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. John Indian, through the trials, also had a number of fits when present for the examination of accused witches. In the late 1940s early 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy made the grandiose pledge to uncover a communist plot to overthrow democracy in United States. Classical authors such as Aeschylus, Horace, and Virgil described sorceresses, ghosts, furies, and harpies with hideous pale faces and crazed hair; clothed in rotting garments, they met at night and sacrificed both animals and humans. They were the ones who were extremely critical of, for example, Reverend Parris, who is a symbol of the extremist and narrow viewpoints held by the church at the time. Why did Arthur Miller write The Crucible? Some of the trial takes place in the actual courtroom, but the metaphor extends beyond the courtroom scenes. The setting of a literary work refers to the time and place in which the action occurs. All three of the accused were examined the next day at Nathaniel Ingersoll's tavern in Salem Village by local magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne. 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. These can all be related back to The Crucible, in the way in which each character experienced. Upon these people, the blame could be laid for all hardships endured by Puritan society. The overwhelming majority of processes, however, went no farther than the rumour stage, for actually accusing someone of witchcraft was a dangerous and expensive business. List their beliefs. Other peers of Miller's, such as playwright Clifford Odets and actor Lee J. Cobb, also testified. We have been advised by some Credible Christians yet alive, that a Malefactor, accused of Witchcraft as well as Murder, and Executed in this place more than Forty Years ago, did then give Notice of, An Horrible PLOT & against the Country by WITCHCRAFT, and a Foundation of WITCHCRAFT then laid, which if it were not seasonably discovered, would probably Blow up, and pull down all the Churches in the Country. ", Latest answer posted October 02, 2020 at 10:46:39 AM. "Tituba and The Salem Witch Trials of 1692." 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. Under the rules of the colony, similar to rules in England, even someone found innocent had to pay for expenses incurred to imprison and feed them before they could be released. Witch hunts primarily target women and exploit India's caste system and culture of patriarchy. 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. 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. According to author Carol F. Karlsen . Want more stories like this? For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as Latest answer posted November 22, 2020 at 12:05:25 PM, In The Crucible, explain what Elizabeth means when she says, "He have his goodness now, God forbid I take it from him. Nevertheless, the reasons for the decline in the witch hunts are as difficult to discern as the reasons for their origins. Tituba was accused by the young girls of appearing to them (as a spirit), which amounted to an accusation of witchcraft. From 1993 Halloween classic Hocus Pocus to American Horror Story: Coven, the witch hunts that ensued from such simple origins have captured the imagination of many artistic minds over the past 300 years, making it perhaps one of the most famous events in American history. Along with this older tradition, attitudes toward witches and the witch hunts of the 14th18th centuries stemmed from a long history of the churchs theological and legal attacks on heretics. 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 investigated whether the charges resulted from personal animosity toward the accused; it obtained physicians statements; it did not allow the naming of accomplices either with or without torture; it required the review of every sentence; and it provided for whipping, banishment, or even house arrest instead of death for first offenders. We now know that some of the accused were pre-teens. It might have been as simple as one person blaming his misfortune on another. 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. Or to keep it anonymous, click here. Why is Thomas Putnam bitter in act 1 of The Crucible. As Miller puts it: 'Land-lust which had been expressed before by constant bickering over boundaries and deeds, could now be elevated to the arena of morality; one could cry witch against one's neighbor and feel perfectly justified in the bargain.'. 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. Arthur Miller in the play, The Crucible, suggests that people of society create a separation between outsiders and insiders of the town, often prosecuting the outsiders to make them stand out even more from society. No satisfactory explanation for the preponderance of women among the accused has appeared. The responsibility for the witch hunts can be distributed among theologians, legal theorists, and the practices of secular and ecclesiastical courts. Whether she was aware of Rev. Jone Johnson Lewis is a women's history writer who has been involved with the women's movement since the late 1960s. 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. By this time, I was sure, John Proctor had bedded Abigail, who had to be dismissed most likely to appease Elizabeth. Many social and religious factors triggered . The same person may have enslaved John Indian; they both disappear from all known records after Tituba's release. 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. Have a tip or story idea? What is a quote said by John Proctor in Act 3 in which he reveals his sin of adultery? They believed that witches were quite real and a gateway into the dark side, the Devil and all that. These beliefs changed drastically, however, towards the end of the Middle Ages, as witchcraft came to be associated with heresy. In that examination, Tituba confessed, naming both Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good as witches and describing their spectral movements, including meeting with the devil. Accusations similar to those expressed by the ancient Syrians and early Christians appeared again in the Middle Ages. 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. First performed in January of 1953 at the height of America's red scare, The Crucible is first and foremost a political argument, relating the Salem witchcraft trials to their contemporary equivalent in Miller's time, the McCarthy hearings. George Burroughs and the Salem Witch Trials, Mary Easty: Hanged as a Witch in Salem, 1692, M.Div., Meadville/Lombard Theological School. 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. Salem witch trials, (June 1692-May 1693), in American history, a series of investigations and persecutions that caused 19 convicted "witches" to be hanged and many other suspects to be imprisoned in Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Danvers, Massachusetts). The ensuing witch hunt would result in the executions of 19 men, women, and children, along with the deaths of at least six others, and the suffering, torment, and calamity of an entire community. But the reason as to why Arthur Miller felt the need to write The Crucible in the first place was because the unfortunate reality that history seemed to have repeated itself again. Scapegoating can be viewed as the main reason behind the American witch hunts. The events in Salem and other towns in New England took place in a region of isolated villages and towns. 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. 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. 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. Members of the community claimed to have seen a person's spirit performing witchcraft, a crime that would cause a person to be sentenced to death. Like the Spanish colonies, the English colonies repeated the European stereotype with a few minor differences. Therefore, to create unity, one also had to exclude and prohibit those who could threaten it. 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. Jill Schonebelen wrote a research paper on Witchcraft allegations, refugee protection and human rights. 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). His 17 June 2000 article inThe Guardian/The Observer, "Are You Now Or Were You Ever?,"describes the paranoia that swept America in that era and the moment his then-wife, Marilyn Monroe, became a bargaining chip in his own prosecution. The witch hunts varied enormously in place and in time, but they were united by a common and coherent theological and legal worldview. In pointing out this paradox, Miller suggests that the witch hunts exposed the failure of the Puritan theocracy. Malleus Maleficarum, first published in 1487 by Heinrich Kramer, was a major influence on this attitude shift. They simply used accusations of witchcraft and magic to prove their moral and doctrinal superiority over the other side. Miller's extensive stage directions suggest several reasons why the Witch Trials had to take place in Salem. ThoughtCo, Jan. 5, 2021, thoughtco.com/tituba-salem-witch-trials-3530572. Elizabeth Proctor had been the orphaned Abigails mistress, and they had lived together in the same small house until Elizabeth fired the girl. By the 14th century, fear of heresy and of Satan had added charges of diabolism to the usual indictment of witches, maleficium (malevolent sorcery). The events in 1692 parallel the witch hunts in 1950s. 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. If witchcraft existed, as people believed it did, then it was an absolute necessity to extirpate it before it destroyed the world. why did the witch-hunts occur? Because of the continuity of witch trials with those for heresy, it is impossible to say when the first witch trial occurred. According to Cotton Mather, what are the immediate and long-term goals of the Devil? Little is known of Tituba's background or even origin. They were Christians who originally left England because they felt persecuted. Scholars have attempted to answer these questions with a variety of economic and physiological theories. . 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. It was because of these that witch hunters made so many false accusations. 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. 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 . In this way, the socio-political changes caused by climate change, such as failed crops, disease, and rural economic poverty, produced the conditions that enabled witch-hunting to flare up. The "parochial snobbery" as well as a "predilection for minding. Lewis, Jone Johnson. Tituba was among the first three people accused of being a witch during the Salem witch trials of 1692. Parris. When Arthur Miller published The Crucible in the early 1950s, he simply outdid the historians at their own game.. The notorious Spanish Inquisition formed due to the Counter-Reformation focused little on pursuing those accused of witchcraft, having concluded that witches were much less dangerous than their usual targets, namely converted Jews and Muslims. Fear, accusations, and doing things for personal gain is a natural human instinct. Accessed 4 Mar. A combination of multiple different forces came together to create the circumstances in which these witch hunts took place, so there are numerous reasons to consider. She included in her confession complicated tales of witchcraftall compatible with English folk beliefs, not voodoo as some have alleged.
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