The Devil's Shadow Plot

The time is between the early spring of 1692 and the winter of 1693, living in a new american colony, a very scary thing for the people. Twenty people were put to death, and over 200 were accused of being a witch or wizard. I believe this was an act of subconscious historia two young girls, AbigailWilliams and Elizabeth Parris were exhibiting strange behavior. Elizabeth’s father is the town's minister, his name is Samuel Parris. These girls exhibited, odd sounds, contouring their bodies, throwing objects and biting. When eventually taken to a doctor, (the only doctor in Salem) he diagnosed it as something supernatural or spiritual. The two girls accused three women, Tituba is one of them. Tituba was the slave for the two girls, her origins are unknown, but it is thought that she came from the Caribbean and has a daughter.

After the accused the women, the city of Salem went crazy. First, it did not help that the doctor could not explain why these things were happening to the girls. Also since Salem was very religious, when someone even thinks the devil can be a cause, they go crazy. As Salem kept tearing itself apart the children were at the head of it. After accusing the first three women the kept accusing more and more, until the court had done hundreds of trials. Also this led to innocent women being killed, because people were paranoid about the devil being in the town. Now if Tituba had not confessed to being a witch, I believe the same events would have happened. The doctor still would have not known what was happening to the girls. Also the devil's

Not much is known about her early life other than the fact she was kidnapped from her village in South America to be taken to Barbados as a slave. She was bought and taken to Boston in 1680. Her master, Samuel Parris, was appointed minister and moved to Salem Village. There, she was accused of witchcraft because of accusations she practiced voodoo and taught village girls fortune telling. She was deemed not guilty of the accusations and was sold to a new master. The whereabouts of Tituba where unknown after this transaction.

After covering 17th century colonial America in class, focusing on the New England settlements, I decided that the subject matter I wanted to learn more about was the events surrounding witchcraft in Salem and other New England colonies. In the historical novel The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England, author Carol F. Karlsen focuses on the the accused female “witch” in colonial New England and discusses a broad array of themes regarding the role and position of women in Puritan society. Carol F. Karlsen is currently a professor in the history department at the University of Michigan, she specializes in American Women and early social and cultural studies; Karlsen received her Ph D. from Yale University in 1980.

The Salem Witch Trails were a dark period, where adults took the words of kids with no evidence over the accused. This time is one of the examples of America’s Red Scare; when many innocent lives were being taken one after another over the rumors of witchcraft. These structure of events put into a book named The Crucibles, written by an American playwright, an author in 1953 named Arthur Miller. He describes the trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 1692-1693 period.

The start of Witch Trials first took place in Europe in the 1300’s. However, in the year 1692, the Witch Trials had made their way into America; changing history forever. The Witch Trials took place in a town named Salem, Massachusetts. The idea of witchcraft feared many of the townspeople because they thought that the devil gave power to the witches as a reward for staying loyal to him (“The Salem Witch Trials”).

The events that took place in Salem in 1692 are parts of a pattern throughout history. The role of religion, the want of attention from young girls, and different classes from the community caused a mass hysteria of witchcraft going on in the community causing the persecution of innocent people, especially women, as witches.

These youth sparked the beginning of the Witch Trials, giving life to something terrible. All throughout Salem, more and more so-called witches and wizards were falsely accused, condemned, and killed. Most people, including Schiff, give credit to Tituba as being the gasoline poured on the spark the adolescents had created, creating a wildfire. The Witch Trials grew so out of hand that by late September, the end of the witch trials, somewhere between 144 and 185 witches and wizards were accused.

     The play is set in Salem, Massachusetts, 1692, where suspicions of witchcraft were floating around the town air. Act 1 starts out in early spring and ends in Act 4 when it is late fall. The play opens with Betty Parris sick in bed, and Reverend Parris tending to her, and wondering what made her so sick. Soon Abigail Williams saunters in, and through much probing, Reverend Parris eventually finds out that she, Tituba, Susanna Walcott and Betty were all involved together in a secret practicing of

The fear over the devil and people who did his bidding spread rapidly across Salem. People feared that the devil would find a way to infiltrate and damage Christian communities; they feared that the devil was nearby. Yet, how had this happened? Many factors contribute to this question such as religion, economics, vengeance, fears and even imagination. However, there’s one factor which contributes the most: one of the accused witches, going by the name of Tituba, confessed that she and other people were indeed witches bound to do the bidding of the devil. It was the already-found fear and the confession of the accused witch who seemed to start it all, who seemed to start a massive witch hunt.

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

The Salem witch trials were a dark time in American history. It all started when Reverend Parris’ daughter and niece were acting strangely after spending time with Parris’ slave Tituba. For example, “They were believed to have danced a black magic dance in the nearby woods. Several of the girls would fall to the floor and scream hysterically” (“Witchcraft in Salem”). Parris then believed that Tituba along with two other women had bewitched his daughter and niece, thus starting the witch hunt.

This investigation will focus on the question: What role did Tituba 's confession to be a witch start the mass hunt for the witches in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692? This investigation will include details on the events that occurred after Tituba’s confession in Salem during 1962 and 1963. It will also include a brief description of society at the time and what societal pressures may have led to this horrific time.

The trouble in Salem began in January, 1692 when Tituba, a slave from the West Indies was talking to Elizabeth Parris, daughter of the Reverend Samuel Parris, and his niece, Abigail Williams about their futures. After telling them their futures, the girls begin to cry hysterically and act strangely as if bewitched. These fits could be brought on by the idea that their futures as Puritan child-bearing women was at risk or also by the girl’s wanted attention that they had no chance at getting regularly in Puritan society. Tituba also is undergoing torments at this time, seeing specters and having the same type of fits that the other girls are having. As the fits begin to happen to other

Like a dog eager to please her master, she eventually broke under the beatings, confessing to a crime she didn’t commit. Even though some might say she wasn’t completely at fault since she would’ve been hanged for not confessing, her false confession was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Tituba had sobbed out, “Oh, how many times he bid me kill you, mister Parris”(Miller)! Her own repressed bitterness and hatred for Parris clearly beat out her desire to maintain her innocence. Her own selfish reasons for confessing made her responsible for what happened afterward. It was also these bitter feelings that probably bolstered the girls into making their own accusations. There were many people accused. Most, if not all, were accused out of spite. In the article, it states, “The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, fourteen of them women, and all but one by hanging”(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials). The girls probably wouldn’t have had the confidence to make accusations, but after hearing Tituba’s emotional confession, they jumped on it like rabid animals. Tituba’s confession the pebble that started the avalanche of wild accusations. Tituba was completely responsible for the onset of the Salem Witch