Essay on the Burning of Bridget Cleary

The Burning of Bridget Cleary by Angela Bourke tells the investigation of a death of an ill woman whom was believed to have been abducted and later killed by fairies. The young vibrant Bridget Cleary became suddenly ill after receiving a chill while traveling to a relative’s house. After walking a total of 8 miles in the cold she later fell sick with bronchitis and pneumonia. These signs of weakness spread rumors around a small town with a population roughly around 100 people. Suddenly Bridget Cleary went missing, and her body was found a few days after she reportedly walked out of the house to later return. The Burning of Bridget Cleary by Angela Bourke asserts that the burning of Bridget for being a fairy was a response to anxiety and fear

William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” takes a lot of real life cultural values and ways of southern life in the late 1800s. Many of those values and ways are expressed by sharecropping and tenant farming.

In light of pleading innocent, Bridget Bishop was held accountable for her witchcraft. Her innocence is proven in that these evidences presented against her were majority based on speculation. These speculations being that she was an owner of two taverns in which she knew how to entertain men, her husbands passed away by unknown causes linked to her sorcery, who dressed flamboyant, because it was odd to the puritans and her plea in court was not convincing enough.

K.H. Connell, in his paper “Land and Population in Ireland, 1780-1845”, describes and explains the significant population growth in Ireland prior to the famine of 1845 and how the uses of the Irish land changed with the population growth.

Change came when Britain began to send captives to their colonies in order to establish the colonies under British rule. Also change occurred in once self sufficient Ireland. Irish people originally remained in Ireland and didn’t feel a need to migrate because of their situation in their homeland was a good one. This was until Ireland experienced their potato famine which forced vast numbers of irish to relocate other places (mostly the USA).

Discoveries show, that it all ended up to be a hallucinations due to Ergotism, contained in rye bread (Doc N). This poisoning caused one of the symptoms presented in most “witches”, hallucinations, which caused the person to see through the eye what the brain has created. Hallucinations occurred to a nurse with abnormal characteristics, as in, physical harassment, and long-winded false statements (Doc L).This poisoning was more common in women and children, revealing a more logical explanation as to why there were only women accused of witchcraft (Doc E and N). Thus, a contamination of a grain is the root of this growing legend.

Even though young Sarty despises his father’s (Abner) crimes, why does he keep these crimes to himself and not expose his father? Throughout the text of “Barn Burning”, Sarty seems to have repetitive feelings of grief and despair, yet he hesitates to out his father for his crimes. Sarty is hesitant to out his father for his crimes because he hopes his father will change, he fears his father will harm him physically or emotionally, and he places a priority on his family’s wellbeing before his own.

William Faulkner some would say was one of the great writers of American literature during the twentieth century. His stories many times had a gothic plot and contained odd or supernatural ideas and characters. He had many notable works, two of which were “A Rose for Emily” and “Barn Burning”. “A Rose for Emily” and “Barn Burning” are similar in the way that William Faulkner portrays the characters and the tone he uses in both.

What is the difference between superstitions and traditions? «The lottery» by Shirley Jackson provides a good example how superstitions of people from a tiny town affect on those traditions. This story shows dark side of Humanity. Whole community entrusts their life with a small black box. The allegory can confuse you, because the main purpose of the «lottery» is kill one of the citizens for a strange false belief. To my mind, the author tried to explain why new generation sometimes shouldn’t continue the weird and cruel traditions.

He stooped down to pick up the rake or pitchfork to strike her, when she vanished.”2 The slave testified against her as a witch, and even though she was not convicted of witchcraft this earlier trial demonstrates that Bridget was previously suspected of witchcraft.

Clearly, a large portion of the turmoil experienced during this type could be put down to the changing government of the period. Though democratically elected and in more direct control of the Irish nation, the Home Rule government what the Irish called the Free State in its first years was not as responsive to the people as some desired (Ferriter, n.d.). An effective civil service providing for many needs was set up, but the ruling party and government experienced internal strife over significant differences of opinion throughout this decade (Ferriter, n.d.). The government was a democracy, but a very young democracy, and with all of the problems that this youth entails in a newly freed and democratically empowered nation and population.

Women were the primary targets of witch hunts, a craze that gripped medieval Europe between the 1600’s to the 1700’s. Women’s bodies and sexuality were repressed due to it’s dangerous threat to the medieval society. Women’s bodies were tortured and mutilated to prove the authenticity of witchcraft. The evolution of the witch throughout the 1600’s to the 1800’s, changed the perceptions of elderly women and witchcraft into the modern times.

The English were making the Irish poor to force them into the protestant church. Under the Penal Laws the Irish Catholics were deprived them of any right to be represented in local government, to vote, or to even own land. Under these harsh conditions it is no wonder woman and children of the time bumbled around town just to find some way to survive as a catholic while protestantism is being shoved down one 's thought.

The Irish had suffered long before in the hands of the English when Cromwell had been in control and had taken away land held by the catholic majority of the country to members of the protestant minority. This created a large tension among the population with the oppressed majority and the rather entitled minority who by Trevelyan’s snooty tone did indeed see themselves as the superior people in the country. (Trevelyan’s tone is probably the most dismissive when in discussion of the Irish, mayhaps showing his own true dislike.) (Trevelyan, p. 116-

On the left we have Caravaggio, The Conversion of St. Paul, 1600, and on the right we have Georges de la Tour, Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, 1640. These two paintings represent major movements within art such as the influence of artists on one another, and the approach of religious paintings during the seventeenth century.