The Salem Journal: The Aftermath Analysis

The Salem witch trials were a result of mass hysteria. It was caused by false accusations. On May 1693, fourteen women, five men, and two dogs were executed for supposed supernatural crimes. The Salem trials have a unique place in our collective history today. (" Saxon, V,Procedure Used in...").

The Salem witch trials was a story of envy, lies, and the danger of the people. Others wouldn’t defend those accused, and if they did, they themselves were eventually charged as witches. In many ways, defending others was condemning yourself. Such was the case for John Proctor in “The Crucible”. John Proctor was someone who had made mistakes, but through his own crucible made peace with himself and defended the honor of himself and the others that would not admit to witchcraft.

History generally regards the period of Salem witchcraft trials as a radical instatement of religious zeal which favored superstition over reason and targeted a large number of women over a much smaller number of men. Admittedly, the 1692 witchcraft crisis is a very complex historical episode, yet seeing as the majority of the people involved were women, it can be perceived as a gender issue, and illustrative for the definition of the role of women in New England. The present work's aim is to outline the colonial mindset concerning women and present relevant theories by means of analyzing three cases of witchcraft accusation together with delving into the accusers' perspective.

Salem Village was one of many non-urban inhabitants. They were looked upon as country folk because of their interests and beliefs in the church and growing tobacco to survive in this new land. There was not much for children to do except go to church, work on the fields, or go to school. You can imagine how bored these children can get. In such a secluded lifestyle as this, you would be a crazy person if you were at all different, and this episode would be so different that it would be traumatic to the people of this small village. Traumatic as it was, I believe the people just did not know how to react in such a situation.

The Salem Witch Trials was a very dark period in our history that occurred in the colony of Salem, Massachusetts. These trials began in February 1692 and ended in May of 1693. There were over two hundred individuals who were accused of practicing witchcraft. Of those two hundred accused, nearly twenty innocent souls were lost. This was one of the most severe cases of mass hysteria in recorded history. There was a great effort exhorted by the Massachusetts General Court to declare a guilty verdict, that the framers of the United States Constitution went to great lengths to never let this type of tragedy occur again; commonly known as the eighth amendment. Remarkably so, some may argue that there were similarities in Salem and the

Kappanadze, Margaret. "Baker, Emerson W.: A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience." Library Journal 15 Sept. 2014: 92. General OneFile. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.

In Richard GodBeers novel “Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692” he tells of a witch trial that took place in Stamford Connecticut in 1692. GodBeer starts readers off with the setting taking place in Daniel and Abigail Wescots household. He tells of a dilemma going on in the household pertaining to their servant; Katherine Branch. She was experiencing hallucinated fits that caused her to convulse and scream in pain. The ongoing fits led the Wescot’s and other citizens of Stamford into believing the fits were caused by bewitchment. The suspicion then leads Katherine Branch to tell of visitations from the devil in numerous forms, as well as being tormented by witches. She accuses Elizabeth Clawson, Mercy Disborough, Goody Miller, Mary Staples, and Hannah Harvey as the individuals visiting her and tormenting her in her hallucinations. The accusation then led to a witch hunt trial resulting in the arrestment of all the women Katherine had named. Kate’s accusations led citizens of Stamford to agree with her statements due to past confrontations with any of the accused individuals. The trial resulted in all women being found innocent or given their freedom due to insufficient evidence. The witch hunt trial of Stamford Connecticut corresponded with the infamous witch hunt that took place in Salem Massachusetts in the year 1692. Salem’s trial was ignited by a group of girls whom also fell into convulsions and fits just as

Devastation come in all shapes and forms. Whether it is a hurricane that has destroyed a whole city or a plague that’s whipped out a whole country. In today’s society, we are able to track a hurricane and evacuate all nearby populaces before it arrives and a plague is highly unlikely due to our modern medicines, many different vaccines that have been and still are being created. However, in Salem Massachusetts, a devastation occurred that was unprecedented. It was not a hurricane or even a plague that had killed innocent people, but a group of girls. Could this have been prevented and lives saved? This paper will discuss the events that occurred in Salem in 1692 and the impact it had on the community.

In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he writes, “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” (Miller 77). This partially fictionalized tale of the Salem Witch Trials points to one of the causes of the trials, vengeance, but the over dramatized tale 's early stages were quiet. The Salem Witch Episode had humble beginnings in the town of Salem Village, Massachusetts, but evolved into one of the most widely known witch trials in American History. The gallows in Salem claimed the lives of nineteen men and woman during the spring and summer of 1692 due to the accusations of witchcraft with over a hundred people who were accused. After all the terror and the uproar of the trials occurred, everything came to a screeching halt (Linder 1). Due to the unique circumstances of this particular set of witch trials, from the rampant accusations to the discontinuation of the trials mass hysteria does not seem to be fault as with other witch trials, but a variety of factors. The Salem witch trials were not just a simple case of mass hysteria, but a combination of factors ranging from poisons to superstitions to scapegoats, resulting in the outbreak of the Salem Witch episode.

The myths surrounding the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 spike the interest of historians and non-academics alike. These trials have been the concern of different historical articles, novels, plays, films, and even religious debates. One issue that is certain, is the hysteria of the community overwhelmed Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 and 1693. A particular primary source, “Accounts of the Salem Witchcraft Trials (1693)” by Cotton Mather, suggests that the actions brought forth provided proof of satanic work. Even though Mather was a contemporary observer, Mather fails to analyze the importance of the real contemporary issues displayed during the time of the trials. Furthermore, historian Kyle Koehler, takes a different approach in his review,

What really happened during Salem 1692? Many questions still haunt many Americans in the beginning of the twenty-first century. During 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear about satanic afflictions, like the same way everyone else feels about terrorism around the world today. Everything about witchcraft outbreak during that year was strange. Many responses to the information were never answered during the late seventeenth-century when the witchcraft crisis occurred. During this time there were horrifyingly Indian attacks that mainly scared northern frontier of settlers, refugees, and also the main accusers of witches these groups all fled to communities like Salem. But on the other side colony’s leaders were very defensive about

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions that delivered the final blow to New England Way, revealing social divisions. They turned friends and family against each other and sent the citizens into a panicked frenzy of accusations. No one could trust anyone, and over 200 women were accused of witchcraft. The Salem Witch trials marked a dark period in New England’s history.

Many people know of the Salem witch trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in the year 1692 spilling over into the year 1693. But for those who do not know, the Salem witch trials were a series of trials against men, women, and children accused of being a witch and or practicing witchcraft. In “The Devils Snare: The Salem Witch Trials of 1692” by Mary Beth Norton, the author recollects the stories of real life accounts of those accusers and the accused in Salem during that time. Mary Beth Norton explains the Salem witch trials differently than other books and articles by giving wide-ranging background on incidents leading toward the trials and how events in history were related to the trials.

Bharati Mukhrtjee is one of the most celebrated writers of the Indian Writing in English. Her fiction examines how postcolonialism affects identity formation in contemporary women’s immigrant literature. Her basic concern is to deal with the problems of cross-cultural conflicts faced by Indian women immigrants. Her immigrants since they come from an Asian or non-European background, undergo experiences somewhat dissimilar to those of European immigrants in the past. In the Asian immigrants of America, the colliding worlds of their exile and immigration generate a number of psychological anomalies that merge into one another to form a unique blend of cross-cultural consciousness that can be measured only by its own ability to survive and succeed. The paper scrutinizes the journey of the human mind

Roger Conant, along with other immigrants from Cape Ann, Massachusetts, founded a sizable town in Massachusetts in 1626 which they referred to as Naumkeag. However, these Puritan immigrants desired a name which better reflected their hopes for their new home and their strong beliefs (http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2229.html). Eventually, the name Naumkeag faded away and the settlers referred to their town as Salem which biblestudytools.com defines as “Complete or perfect peace” (http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/salem/). In light of the events just 67 years later, this name is tragically ironic as the town will forever be remembered for anything but peace and tranquility.