Summary Of In The Devil's Snare By Mary Beth Norton

It is often difficult to understand the thought process that other people’s might have had many years ago. A college professor and writer, Richard Godbeer attempts to explain the thought process of the people who were involved in witch trials in the year 1692 in his text “How Could They Believe That?”. He often tells students in college and high school that we can relate to how society was in 1692 and how their views on life, and specifically the supernatural forces, are completely justifiable. In this article he explains the social atmosphere, the environment in which the settlers lived in, as well as how thorough the process of persecution was.

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a series of prosecutions of people who were accused of acts of witchcraft or of being a witch in Salem, Massachusetts through the time period of February 1692 through May 1693. This was a dark time in history as more than 200 prosecutions took place and at least 20 people were killed during this time of fear and hysteria. The accusations began as three girls Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne were accused of witchcraft from other young girls in the community. During this time period, fear of the Devil was common as people in Salem were very devoted to their religion and religious practices. As one of the accused girls, Tituba, confessed to working for the Devil and admitting to being a witch, this caused panic and hysteria as a massive witch hunt took place to find more of these witches. This confession was the main reason behind months and months of fear and mass panic as it triggered more accusations.

To learn more about the Salem witchcraft hysteria, Historian Paul Boyer, and Professor Stephen Nissenbaum sought to further understand the accusations of witchcraft. During the late 1600’s life in colonial New England was one led by religion and politics. Salem was broken up into two factions, Salem Village, and Salem Town. Salem Village, which was led by the Putnam family was a rapidly growing

Everyone knows about the blood bath that was the Salem Witch Trials, but what not many know is what caused it and how it affected Americans throughout History. In the summer of 1692, it all started. A couple of Puritans thought that their daughters were being influenced by the Devil, but what they did not know is what the doctor said would affect the whole town, and eve their ancestors. Thesis: Many peaceful years after the Puritans’ journey to the new world, trouble arose through the Salem Witch Trials by what happened, what caused it, and the effects.

This is a book broken into chapters with 376 pages. This novel discusses the people and events that occurred during the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts. The author, Emerson Baker, does this by taking a large number of primary documents, scholarly interpretation, and speculations from the centuries that surround the trials. Baker examines the trials inside the 1600 time period, he then places the trials into the bigger picture of American history

The purpose of this book was to examine the history and social life of Salem Village to try to figure out what was the cause of the events that occurred there. I believe that the authors achieved their objective at least they did to me. Boyer and Nissenbaum's explanation for the outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem hinges on an understanding of the economic,

The largest outbreak of witchcraft in America took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. A group of girls, including the Parris’s Indian slave Tituba, gathered in the Salem village and were attempting to see the future by decoding “messages”. Shortly after this gathering the girls started showing signs of the possessed (pg. 73). To this day people all over America are still amazed with the events that took place in this time. But why is that? The fear of the village fell heavily onto the judicial system, which later made people focus on the proper separation of government and religious beliefs. Mass hysteria broke out amongst the village and many people were being accused, therefore leading to many innocent deaths. Although there could be many theories as to the reason the witch trials in Salem began, there are two points of view that are very commonly shared amongst people. Some believe that the Salem witch trials were women unconsciously searching for power, whereas others believe it was an encephalitis epidemic.

The Salem witch trials, that occurred in colonial Massachusetts, were a hostile part of American history. People lived in a constant state of paranoia and fear. A great number of people were accused of practicing witchcraft, which was thought to be connected to the devil, and some were even executed. Eventually, the colony realized the faults in the trials. By reading the primary sources ‘A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft Chapter II’ by John Hale and Two Letters by Governor William Phips, we are able to discover a wealth of knowledge about the aforementioned trials. The two sources allow the reader to gain insight into how the trials were flawed by showing the nature of the Salem Witch Trials, the evidence used to find the witches guilty, and the role native americans played in the trials. While also exhibiting how primary sources can be a disadvantage in navigating through historical events.

The war between the Wampanoag tribe and the English colonists, known as King Philip’s War, gave the puritans the mindset that the Natives were associated with witchcraft and worshipped the Devil. The puritans believed that the natives would try to invade and destroy their religious community. The belief remained even after the war has ended which leads to the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, which occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, where the citizens, mainly women, were accused of practicing witchcraft and glorifying the Devil, similarly to what was thought of the Natives. Considered as the most significant mass witch hunt in the history of the colonies, Salem witch trial as sparked by the puritan’s hysteria of witchcraft, leading to the execution of more than 20 Massachusetts’ colonists, due to the fear, which was manifested from the Wampanoag tribe’s attack (mainly on puritan communities) during King Philip’s war in 1675 to 1676, causing the puritans to believe that the natives are connected to the devil and witchcraft which could affect the lives and experiences of those who are accused falsely based on the hysteria and spectral evidence.

Suddenly people seemed very paranoid and soon residents were placing blame on one another and accusing each other of witchcraft. In a fifteen month period between 1691 and 1692 nearly twelve dozen people were accused of witchcraft in or near Salem (Norton, p8).

Three centuries ago, the Puritan religion was the base of the Salem village and many townspeople strongly believed in the existence of witches and witchcraft. According to the common Puritan belief, witches were in alliance with the devil and were granted power to harm. People were blamed for illness, failed crops, to bad weather, and many other things that were evident centuries ago. Due to the belief in witchcraft villagers were, perhaps, inclined to the most improbable explanations. The Puritans held strict views, ways of living, perspectives fears, and fantasies. Many Puritan ministers used the the fear of witchcraft to scare the believers into following the church. Historians believe these strict Puritan ways of life may have brought upon the witchcraft hysteria in Salem. At the time, witches and witchcraft were a serious and viewed as a real threat; almost as real as

The events that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 have had historians scrutinizing over the causes for years. There have been several theories about how the situation became so out of control. The haunting story is well known in America, taught to our youth and has been the focus of numerous forms of media. We are familiar with the story but unfamiliar with the origin of its beginnings. The role of religion and the presence of mob psychology were the primary catalyst behind the Salem witch trials.

Confidence in the supernatural–and particularly in the demon's practice of giving certain people (witches) the ability to mischief others as an exchange for their loyalty–had rose in Europe as promptly as the fourteenth century, and was across the board in frontier New England. What's more, the brutal substances of life in the rustic Puritan group of Salem Village (present-day Danvers, Massachusetts) at the time incorporated the delayed consequences of a British war with France in the American settlements in 1689, a late smallpox scourge, reasons for alarm of assaults from neighboring Native American tribes and a longstanding contention with the more prosperous group of Salem Town (present-day Salem). Betwixt these stewing strains, the Salem witch trials might be energized by occupants' suspicions of and disdain to their neighbors, and their alarm of outsiders.

I chose to read In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 for my book review. I chose this book because I have always been fascinated with the Salem Witch Trials and I wanted to learn more information about the trials. The author of this book was Mary Beth Norton, Norton is a professor at Cornell University and from reading her biography on the Cornell website I could tell that she was well versed in the Salem Witch Trials. Norton wrote In the Devil’s Snare in 2002; in the book’s introduction Norton states that her narrative “builds on the research and interpretations advanced in prior works on Salem; at the same time it disagrees with many aspects of those interpretations.” Norton also goes into detail to explain the

In the book “In the Devils Snare: The Salem Witch Trials” by Mary Beth Norton, it starts by giving details of what was occurring in Massachusetts before the accusations and trials began. Norton starts off by describing the First and Second Indian Wars and how it affected the colony of Massachusetts when 150 Wabanaki Indians burn and rob the whole town of York, killing 50 and capturing over 100 townspeople. Mary Beth Norton than begins to write about the town of Salem, describing the first of many “fits” the town’s pastor Samuel Parris’ niece Abigail, and many other accusers would have, in the accusations of so-called witches also called specters. Young girls in the town of Salem began having strange fits described as falling on