Summary: Could The Innocent Death Of Rebecca Nurse Cause A Rebellion Uprising

In 1692, when the Salem Witch Trials thrived, everyone feared a common enemy, witches. Abigail Williams, the niece of the powerful Reverend Parris, begins accusing women of being witches after she herself is accused of conversing with the devil. “...I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!”(45) The people of Salem originally had nothing to fear until Abigail William’s wild accusations. These claims led to the majority fearing that anyone was capable was witchcraft. This turned friends and even family members against each other. John Proctor, a seemingly innocent man, had been accused of participating in dark magic. Reverend John Hale is conversing with his wife to convince her to persuade her husband to confess to his sins.

During this time, there was no recorded witch craft going on, instead the true root of these problems started because of an issue between two families, the Putnam’s and the Porters. The Putnam’s were a family that was already living in the tow and used to own most of the area’s wealth, that was until, the arrival of the Porters. When the Porters moved into town they began gaining all the wealth and prestige from the people of the colony. Therefore, it was no surprise that the accusers of witchcraft were the Putnam family and the ones being wrongfully accused were the Porter family. The goal of the Putnam’s was to get rid of the porters all together in attempt to bring back wealth and prestige to the family name.

Towards the middle of the play more accusations keep appearing. Well respected and known towns people begin being accused of being a witch. Most towns’ people are now in disbelief because such accusations should not be. “Believe me, Mr. Nurse, if Rebecca Nurse be tainted, then nothing’s left to stop the whole world from burning. Let you rest upon the justice of the court; the court will send her home, I know it.” (Miller71)

    During the later acts of The Crucible, despite how vastly other characters have changed, Rebecca Nurse remains truthful and highly respected, in spite of being accused of witchcraft and arrested. In act four, Reverend Parris even testifies for her good character, which contradicts his earlier accusations of her witchery, by expressing to the judge that if they “let Rebecca stand upon the gibbet and send up some righteous prayer, [he’ll] fear she’ll wake a vengeance upon [the town].” The people of Salem see Rebecca as such a saintly woman that if she were unjustly killed, God himself would be angered. Reverend Parris recognizes this and feels that if someone so christian could be accused of witchcraft, then there is a serious flaw in the witch trials. This realization also reveals how most of the arrests were based on jealousy and paranoia, not actual evidence.

c. Parris fears that the people in Salem will riot because many people being hanged have not confessed to guilt. Their friends and neighbors know them as good people, so they think that innocent people are being hanged (lines 190–194 and 203–210).

Rebecca Nurse and I share our religious beliefs. Rebecca shows her religious belief by never telling a lie. She was accused of witchcraft through killing Ann Putnam’s babies. She did not want to admit that she was a witch and wind up in jail which goes against her beliefs. A way that I show my religion is by

Rebecca Nurse then proves herself an honest character that is well respected through the plot of the story. She is so well respected that even male figures throughout the play respect her advice. This is shown when Rebecca gives honest advice to John Proctor saying “No, you cannot break charity with your minister. You are another kind, John. Clasp his hand, make your peace” (Miller 181). This is important to Rebecca Nurse as a character because it entails an honest opinion that John should just make peace with Reverend Parris rather than fight fire with fire against him. In addition, when Goody Nurse is convicted of witchcraft, Reverend Hale knows that Rebecca is a very honest and trustworthy person and that in the end she would not be convicted in a trial of witchcraft. This evidence is essential when analyzing Rebecca considering the fact that she was able to Justify in the short time she was with Reverend Hale the honest and trustworthy women she is. All in all, Rebecca Nurse manifests herself as an individual who is can always give her honest opinion and is well respected.

Also, Rebecca Nurse was treated unfairly in court due to suspicion of being involved in witchcraft, but should have been judged based on solid evidence. Rebecca is a positive individual who suggests to solve everybody’s problem: “let us go to God for the cause of it. There is prodigious danger in the

Before his conversation with Abigail, Reverend Parris noticed a bunch of young girls, including his daughter Betty, and his niece Abigail dancing around a circle “conjuring spirits”. Due to the incident in the forest, rumors started about witchcraft. As a response to the fear of losing his honor, Reverend Parris calls in Hale, a doctor from another town, and also goes along with all the accusations produced of who is a witch in town causing many deaths. Overall, Reverend Parris fears of losing his honorable position in the town as reverend by being connected with

Rebecca Nurse was a suspect during the Salem Witch Trials. A minister said, “You are a witch. You know you are a witch,” to Rebecca. Rebecca answered, “You are a liar. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink.” This proves that once a victim is condemned, it is almost impossible to prove them

In a town called Salem, Massachusetts a group of girls go dancing in the woods performing witchcraft and get caught by Reverend Parris. The girls told lies and started rumors to try and cover up themselves so they wouldn’t get in trouble. The rumor of John Proctor being a witch, the

John Demos’s nine point portrait of a witch is one way to analysis the case of Rebecca Nurse. To do so, one must first evaluate and understand the history of Rebecca Nurse and her role in the Salem in the late 1600’s. Rebecca Nurse was the wife of Francis Nurse, a farmer who became wealthy after buying and tending a large plot of land between Salem Village and Salem Town. Together they had eight children, and as a family they were prosperous. Connecting this information to Demos’s portrait of a witch, Rebecca Nurse falls under the first four points made in his sketch. These first two points are that she was “female” and that she was of “middle age”. However, the latter point is slightly inaccurate because Nurse was older than sixty years. The final two points that Rebecca Nurse falls under in Demos’s portrait of a witch are that she was of “English” and “Puritan” descent and culture, and that she was “married”, with little or no children. Again, the latter point is not fully accurate because Rebecca Nurse, while married, had, in fact, eight children in her lifetime. The significance of these traits of Rebecca Nurse agree, for the most part, with the

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 caused hysteria throughout the town rapidly. Fear and paranoia were major causes of why this incident blew out of proportion and became such an intense historical event. When terror struck in the small town of Salem, the society went berserk. The fear of being hanged for witchcraft overcame the women of the community. The constant fright to be accused of trafficking with spirits, even if one knew they were not guilty, created this accusation frenzy. All the girls who had originally claimed they were “possessed by the devil” started blaming others for being witches and conjuring these spirits upon them, especially Abigail Williams. The court of Salem had said that all who did not confess were to be hanged because they were paranoid that if the women were to lie, there still would be witches lingering in their town. Some women decided to confess, even if they were innocent, because of the fear of death. Others did not confess because they were afraid of their reputation being ruined. Rebecca Nurse, a sweet, frail old woman in the town, exclaims, “Why, it is a lie, it is a lie; how may I damn myself? I cannot, I cannot” when the court tries to convince her to follow John Proctor’s lead and confess her sins. She will not confess because she knows she truly is innocent; she would rather be hanged over creating a lying confession and ruining her name. Fear and paranoia was the root cause of the Salem Witch Trials.

The first woman to be tried for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts was Bridget Bishop. She pled not guilty; however, after John Louder’s intense testimony, she was found guilty. Despite the lack of actual, physical evidence, the fear that Lounder’s words instilled in the local judges and citizens turned their hearts cold and their logic upside down.

There were many more accused witches in Salem. Although they were not the main characters in the play, they were a victim of the mass hysteria sweeping the town too. One of these people was Goody Nurse. Mrs. Putnam claimed that she was a witch because of the death of