according to miller, what caused the witch hunts?

No satisfactory explanation for the preponderance of women among the accused has appeared. Log in here. Four-year-old accused witch Dorcas Good went insane after spending months in prison and watching her baby sister die while in jail with their mother, who was later hanged. Indeed, Germany, one of the central countries of the Protestant Reformation, is often referred to as the focal point of the European witch hunts. Rev. Miller presents the idea that vengeance ruins peoples lives or reputation so that you can get what you want and be satisfied. In that examination, Tituba confessed, naming both Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good as witches and describing their spectral movements, including meeting with the devil. In response to the mass hysteria over this communist infiltration, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible. Wherefore The devil is now making one Attempt more upon us; an Attempt more Difficult, more Surprizing, more snarld with unintelligible Circumstances than any that we have hitherto Encountered; an Attempt so Critical, that if we get well through, we shall soon Enjoy Halcyon Days, with all the Vultures of Hell Trodden under our Feet. The Reformation, Counter-Reformation, war, conflict, climate change, and economic recession are all some of the factors that influenced the witch hunts across the two continents in various ways. Yet one general explanation is valid: the unique character of the witch hunts was consistent with the prevailing worldview of intelligent, educated, experienced people for more than three centuries. 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. So for a brief explanation, McCarthyism was carried out under senator Joseph McCarthy during 1950-1954 against alleged communist in the US government and in other institutions. The same person may have enslaved John Indian; they both disappear from all known records after Tituba's release. Miller wrote The Crucible during the time America was concerned about the rising power of Communism in the Soviet Union on the heels of World War II. In the 16th and 17th centuries, they left Britain for the New World to establish a society that, they believed, reflected their religious beliefs. A fire, a fire is burning! Drawing on research on the witch trials he had conducted while an undergraduate, Miller composed The Crucible in the early 1950s. Parris beat Tituba to try to get a confession from her. In early 1692, three girls with connections to the Parris household began to exhibit strange behavior. 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. 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. The witch roused Samuel, who then prophesied. But Tituba recanted her confession, and Parris never paid the fine, presumably in retaliation for her recantation. 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. Current PhD Biblical Studies, BA Classics and Religion. My own marriage of twelve years was teetering and I knew more than I wished to know about where the blame lay. "What are the reasons Miller gives for the Salem witch hunts?" Folklore and accounts of trials indicate that a woman who was not protected by a male family member might have been the most likely candidate for an accusation, but the evidence is inconclusive. John Indian, through the trials, also had a number of fits when present for the examination of accused witches. Miller cites the reason for the witch-hunts to be "a preserve of manifestation of the panic which set among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom" and "a long overdue opportunity for everyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins." What does the overture imply about human nature? Explanations of the witch hunts continue to vary, but recent research has shown some of these theories to be improbable or of negligible value. Tituba and The Salem Witch Trials of 1692. B.A. Emailus. By 143550, the number of prosecutions had begun to rise sharply, and toward the end of the 15th century, two events stimulated the hunts: Pope Innocent VIIIs publication in 1484 of the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus (Desiring with the Greatest Ardour) condemning witchcraft as Satanism, the worst of all possible heresies, and the publication in 1486 of Heinrich Krmer and Jacob Sprengers Malleus maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), a learned but cruelly misogynist book blaming witchcraft chiefly on women. Many teachers use The Crucible alongside their discussion of McCarthyism. Why did Arthur Miller name his play "The Crucible"? Any source of witchcraft must be destroyed . Arthur Miller the author of The Crucible conveys this horrific event in his book and demonstrates what fear can lead people to do. In the long run it may be better simply to describe the witch hunts than to try to explain them, since the explanations are so diverse and complicated. The witch-hunt also provided those who were greedy for land, such as the Putnams, to seek satisfaction. Where central authorityi.e., bishops, kings, or the Inquisitionwas strong, convictions were fewer and sentences milder. 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. This was a time when paranoia, hysteria, and deceit gripped the Puritan towns of New England. They could now publicly state their own iniquities and were praised for seeking purification. It would, however, be incorrect to suggest that witch-hunting was something wielded against ones opponents during the many cases of civil unrest ignited by the Reformation. Lewis, Jone Johnson. These stage directions allowed the reader to gain insight as to why Salem was able to serve as home to the witch hunts. Rev. If witchcraft existed, as people believed it did, then it was an absolute necessity to extirpate it before it destroyed the world. In act 4 of The Crucible, it is revealed that Abigail Williams has run away from Salem, but her motives are never discussed. The setting of a literary work refers to the time and place in which the action occurs. "In Act 1, what explanation does Miller give as to why the witch hunts developed in such a community in The Crucible?" Witch trials continued through the 14th and early 15th centuries, but with great inconsistency according to time and place. Because we are all taught that if we listen to women too closely, that way lies the unraveling of the fabric of society. In Boston, he married and later became a minister. Let us know your assignment type and we'll make sure to get you exactly the kind of answer you need. Its origin lies in the establishment of a theocracy by the inhabitants of Salem, which combined state and religious power. Or to keep it anonymous, click here. I Need To Know What 'Very Bland' Opinion Got J.K. Rowling Kicked Out of a Harry Potter Forum, Disney Found a Way To Make Us Care About Peter Pan Again, 'The Mandalorian' Makes It Pretty Clear Where Gina Carano's Cara Dune Went, 'Quantumania' Writer Shares Painful Thoughts on All the Negative Reviews, Jack Black Once Again Proves His Excellence in Super Mario Bros. Movie, Is Grogu Related to Yoda? Over seventy people were implicated as part of the North Berwick trials and seven years later King James came to write Daemonologie. How do you think Miller uses setting to help create mood in Act I? Latest answer posted April 17, 2020 at 1:25:04 AM. ThoughtCo, Jan. 5, 2021, thoughtco.com/tituba-salem-witch-trials-3530572. Ecclesiastical and civil authorities usually tried to restrain witch trials and rarely manipulated witch hunts to obtain money or power. Why did Arthur Miller write The Crucible? The theory best supported by the evidence is that the increasing power of the centralized courts such as the Inquisition and the Parlement acted to begin a process of decriminalization of witchcraft. The outbreak at Salem, where 19 people were executed, was the result of a combination of church politics, family feuds, and hysterical children, all in a vacuum of political authority. In other words, there was how things actually happened during the Salem Witch Trials, and there was how Miller wrote about them, taking lots of liberties to tell this story through a prism that made sense to him. An author named Arthur Miller wrote the play The Crucible based of the true events of the Salem witch trials. Sarah Good claimed her innocence but implicated Tituba and Osborne. Copyright 2023 IPL.org All rights reserved. Tituba herself went into a fit, claiming to be afflicted. This began the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Although the proportions varied according to region and time, on the whole about three-fourths of convicted witches were female. The Black Death: Europes Deadliest Pandemic in Human History. By directing blame for misfortune upon others, various populations across Europe succumbed to the mass panic and collective fear ignited by those in authority. She would also have likely been aware of the unrest in the community when raids were launched in New England, starting up again in 1689 (and called King William's War), with New France using both French soldiers and local Native Americans to fight against the English colonists. She is a tour guide in Glasnevin Cemetery Museum, a popular historical site in Dublin, and a published fiction and non-fiction writer. This helped to feed the paranoia that people felt about one another. Let us know your assignment type and we'll make sure to get you exactly the kind of answer you need. The term 'witch-hunt' has become entrenched in our vocabulary and our consciousness to mean, metaphorically, any act which purposely seeks out to punish those who hold unpopular views or. Conventional wisdom has it that mankind has evolved so far that the idea of targeting innocents is no longer an issue; however, Senator McCarthy and targeting of innocent Muslims after 9/11 remind us that witch hunts still exists in modern times. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, what does the author mean by his statement that "the Salem tragedy developed from a paradox"? Scholars have attempted to answer these questions with a variety of economic and physiological theories. "It would probably never have occurred to me to write a play about the Salem witch trials of 1692 had I not seen some astonishing correspondences with that calamity in the America of the late 40s and early 50s. Sometimes this magic was believed to work through simple causation as a form of technology. The "parochial snobbery" as well as a "predilection for minding. They [residents of Salem] carried about an innate resistance, even of persecution. Society was undeniably affected by witch hunts, as people did everything in their power to either free themselves from blame or accuse someone else. Women were certainly more likely than men to be economically and politically powerless, but that generalization is too broad to be helpful, for it holds true for societies in periods where witchcraft is absent. According to author Carol F. Karlsen . The legal use of torture declined in the 17th and 18th centuries, and there was a general retreat from religious intensity following the wars of religion (from the 1560s to 1640s). 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. 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. By Katie BrownCurrent PhD Biblical Studies, BA Classics and ReligionKatie is a postgraduate research student in Trinity College Dublin, where she also received her Bachelor's Degree in Classical Civilisation and World Religions and Theology. Miller argues that the fundamental nature of Salem's construction made it a community where the Witch Trials were inevitable. 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. These witch hunts warn against collective thought and unjust persecution and even to this day provide a useful and relevant metaphor for all those who believe themselves victims of unjustified outrage. The responsibility for the witch hunts can be distributed among theologians, legal theorists, and the practices of secular and ecclesiastical courts. It all began in 1692 and 1693 when Salem in the United States . Millers play helps one understand what the Salem Witch Trials did to peoples emotions and mentalities. 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. Miller argues that the fundamental nature of Salem's construction made it a community where the Witch Trials were inevitable. 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. In Salem people were afraid of not appearing christian enough, meanwhile during the 50s Americans feared of being accused of communism. Christian theologians and academics entwined together the superstitious worries people held about the supernatural with Christian doctrine. They were a wide cultural, social, political phenomenon. The process began with suspicions and, occasionally, continued through rumours and accusations to convictions. Salvation and Scapegoating: What Caused the Early Modern Witch Hunts? 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. Accusations similar to those expressed by the ancient Syrians and early Christians appeared again in the Middle Ages. 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. These can all be related back to The Crucible, in the way in which each character experienced. The Salem witch trials, which resulted in several deaths in 1692 in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts, have never been adequately explained. The third girl was Ann Putnam Jr., who was the daughter of a key supporter of Rev. from University of the Western Cape, South Africa. How Long Will Joe Goldbergs Rampage Be Left Unchecked? 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. ", Latest answer posted October 02, 2020 at 10:46:39 AM. Many innocent people were accused of witchcraft, and while some got out of the situation alive not everyone was as lucky. They were a wide cultural, social, political phenomenon. The doctor diagnosed the cause of the afflictions as "Evil Hand.". The Crucible by Arthur Miller is based on the true events of the Salem witch trials. 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. EDSITEment lesson Dramatizing History in Arthur Millers The Crucible, offers an engaging series of activities for students to examine the ways in which Miller interpreted the facts of the witch trials and successfully dramatized them. 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 play is set in Puritan Society in the late 1600s in Salem, where most people are devout Christians and hold a strong belief of both God and the Devil. 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 . It certainly was not deemed to be a threat, even by the leaders of the Catholic Church, who simply denied its existence. The events in Salem and other towns in New England took place in a region of isolated villages and towns. Those include fear, personal motives, unfair treatment of the accused, and accusers. why did the witch-hunts occur? The largest account of witch trials as well as deaths by witch trials occurred in Salem, a village heavily populated with the Puritans. Read the document introduction and transcript and apply your knowledge of American history in order to answer these questions. The authors purpose is to point out that falsely accusing outsiders will not have a good outcome in order to convince the reader to not divide society. 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. On a more material level, the fact that the land charters to Salem had been revoked helped to create an air of tension about land ownership. 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. 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. Indeed, Miller uses witchcraft and the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for situations wherein those who are in power accuse those who challenge them of suspect behavior in order to destroy them. Accessed 4 Mar. There was bad blood between the two women now. Most accused children had parents who had been accused of witchcraft. A neighbor of the Parris family, Mary Sibley, advised John Indian and possibly Tituba to make a witch's cake to identify the cause of the initial "afflictions" of Betty Parris and Abigail Williams. What caused them? The Little Ice Age was a period of climate change characterized by severe weather, famine, sequential epidemics, and chaos. The witch hunts varied enormously in place and in time, but they were united by a common and coherent theological and legal worldview. Cotton Mathers account of the witch trials reinforced colonial New Englanders view of themselves as a chosen generation of men. 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. all rights reserved, History U: Courses for High School Students, Cotton Mathers account of the Salem witch trials, 1693, Located on the lower level of the New-York Historical Society. Describe a relatively recent historical event that resembles the situation that unfolded in Salem. The hunts were not pursuits of individuals already identified as witches but efforts to identify those who were witches. 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. King James VI of Scotland, a monarch notorious for his role in Scotlands witch-hunting craze, believed that he had been personally targeted by witches who conjured dangerous storms while he sailed across the North Sea to Denmark. In the writing of Arthur Miller he chose to place the focus of the book around the witch trials that took place in Salem in the 1400s. Societies under a lot of stress will always give into taunters. The North Berwick trials serve as one of the more famous examples of witches being held responsible for bad weather. ", 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. In the play "The Crucible," Arthur Miller uses a great trial in the Salem witch trials to describe how he felt during the Red Scare in the 1950's. The Red Scare was a national hunt for Communists, or "Reds" as they were called. Latest answer posted November 22, 2020 at 10:36:50 AM. Aligns with CCSS RL.11-12.3 - Analyze the impact of the authors choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama. 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. The story in The Crucible begins with how the paranoia and the following witch hunt started in Salem. In each paragraph these traits will be further explained. 'The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression. While she enjoys any topic relating to history, culture, and the humanities, she is most interested in Ancient Greece and Rome, the Ancient Near East, Irish history, colonization and de-colonization, Jewish and Christian history, and the Early modern period. 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. In the spring of 1692, two young girls from a seemingly inconsequential village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony began to display increasingly disturbing behavior, claiming strange visions and experiencing fits. Parris was, at the time he was in New Spain, not yet married and not yet a minister. Accusations originated with the ill-will of the accuser, or, more often, the accusers fear of someone having ill-will toward him. 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. 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. Although many witchcraft theorists were not deeply misogynist, many others were, notably the authors of the infamous Malleus maleficarum. 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. Rather, recollecting others with distasteful memories such as witchcraft. 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. 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. 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. The Salem witch trials proved to be one of the most cruel and fear driven events to ever occur in history. That John Proctor the sinner might overturn his paralyzing personal guilt and become the most forthright voice against the madness around him was a reassurance to me, and, I suppose, an inspiration: it demonstrated that a clear moral outcry could still spring even from an ambiguously unblemished soul. 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. A bizarre set of accusations, including the sacrifice of children, was made by the Syrians against the Jews in Hellenistic Syria in the 2nd century bce.

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