The Witches By Roald Dahl

"At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful."

The witch trials start when the antagonist, Abigail Williams, a young girl, who is caught dancing in the woods is accused of practicing witchcraft. In order to shift attention from her, she accuses Elizabeth Proctor, the wife of her lover John Proctor, of using witchcraft. During act three a respected landowner named John Proctor and a young girl named Mary Warren began talking to Governor Danforth who is leading trials. John Proctor accuses all the girls that they are pretending to have seen the devil. In the courthouse, to distract all the judges the children pretend to become possessed by the spirit of Mary Warren. Abigail in the courtroom says to Danforth, "I have been hurt, Mr. Danforth; I have seen my blood runnin' out! I have been near to murdered everyday because I done my duty pointing out the Devil's people — and this is my reward?" Although all the girls are lying, they present

Most observers now agree that witches in the villages and towns of the late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century New England tended to be poor. They were usually not the poorest women in the community, but the moderately poor. Karlsen tries to show that a woman who was vulnerable was most likely to be accused of being a witch. Even women who had gained wealth because of the death of a husband were prime candidates.

Dahl’s definitions of witches as women speak badly about women and shows unfair judgement about gender. It criticized the women as if most of them are evil and sinner which also compared to Eva. This may be the weakness of this book. Dahl also used the ugliness of witches to communicate about standards of beauty for western women who may be seen as prescriptive or biasing to some critic. Witchcraft and magic are often see in opposition to organize religion which it maybe affects the religions of other groups. It also influences the children to be afraid to women as it was stated that witches are all

This is the true story of the two young children everyone felt bad for. In the story you have heard the children are left to starve and die all alone in a forest and I, the witch am evil. Well sorry to burst you bubble but that is completely false. I am the witch who everyone believes cooks and eats children, well news to you, I am a vegetarian! I am not evil but those two children were evil. So I will share the true story with you.

There are countless different assumptions about witches. The majority of individuals in the sixteenth and seventeenth century presumed that God and Satan were real (Lambert 1). They also assumed that “witches” were in allegiance with Satan and made a vow to bow down and serve him (Lambert 1). Furthermore, another common belief was

       From 1805 until the present there have been introduced an abundance of paraphrases, translations, adaptations, summaries, versions and illustrations of Beowulf in modern English and in foreign languages due mostly to two reasons: the desire to make the poem accessible, and the desire to read the exotic (Osborn 341). It is the purpose of this essay to present a brief history of this development of the popularity of the poem and then compare some of the translations with respect to some more difficult passages in the poem Beowulf.

Reginald Scot explores the common perceptions towards witches in the late sixteenth century, which he claims they were commonly old, lame, full of wrinkles, poor (Levack 2004: ?), although not necessarily solitary (Larner 1984: 72). Scot claims that their appearance often caused alarm among many in the community and caused the neighbours to find truth in witches utterings. One could argue women were often ascribed with such stereotypes, for they were both physically and politically weakened, and were unable to distance themselves from accusations (levack 1984: 127). It is apparent the oppression of these women could represent an attempt to maintain hegemony in a patriarchal society in the late sixteenth century. Coincidentally, most women accused of sorcery often lived out of the constraints of male authority, where they would live alone, perhaps for the rest of her life.

The witchcraft phenomenon of the Renaissance period was shaped by a wide range of cultural factors; witchcraft was not necessarily subject to a single cohesive idea or concept, and it was often instead a conglomeration of many different societal concerns, concerns which spanned through all spheres of society. Textual evidence from this period provides insight into the way in which witches were conceived, and how witches were dealt with, while visual images present a companion visualisation of the tensions, which influenced created the witch, and the imagery, which came to be associated with witchcraft.

“Uncle, we did dance; let you tell them I confessed-and I’ll be whipped if I must be. But there speakin’ of witch craft.” Could you imagine being accused of witchcraft just for being out in the woods, dancing around a fire with some friends? From Abigail Williams motives, the choices she make, along with the consequences that are put in to place that has caused this chaos, to the person Abigail has become by the end of the play. The Crucible by Arthur Miller, is an emotional rollercoaster.

<i>Why do you hurt these children?<br>I do not hurt them. I scorn it.<br>Have you made no contract with the devil? <br>No!</i><br><br>Mr. John Hathorn, a Judge involved in the witchcraft case of Sarah Good, then asked all of the afflicted children to look upon her and see if this was the person that had hurt them so. They all gazed at Goody Good and said that this was the person that tormented them—presently they were all tormented.<br><br>Puritanical beliefs had all of Salem truly believing that witches rode on broomsticks across the sky every night alongside the devil himself. They believed that these mere humans could send their "specter" out and haunt the children of their town. Proof of their belief follows, in an excerpt from Cotton

That violent, crazy act was the last act of childhood. For as I gazed at the immobile face with the sad, weary eyes, I gazed upon a kind of reality which is hidden to childhood, The witch was no longer a witch but only a broken old woman who had dared to create beauty in the midst of ugliness and sterility. She had been born in squalor and lived in it all her life.”

Witches are evil baby-eating hags who procreate with demons to harm peaceful, innocent communities. Throughout history there have been many examples of witches and witches getting burned at the stake. When someone is named a witch they receive a witch's fate. Some witches are fictional, some become witches through peculiarity, and some are made because of convenience.

Shorter defines witchcraft as the “inborn power to harm others secretly and unjustifiably.” This mean, there is no reason, it shows that witches harm randomly because they are driven to do so. According to Magesa, they operate psychically and project from the mind their powers on the victim. There is no rite preformed or spell uttered. Magesa draw a dichotomy between a sorcerer and a witch thereby states, “The use

Nazir has kindly volunteered for this piece of work. He is a native of Syria who was born in the capital Damascus. His mother tongue is Arabic and he is studying English at South Thames College on the Upper Intermediate level. He currently performs in the top half of the class according to his own assessment with which I tend to concur.