Tituba And The Salem Witch Trials

When it came to voodoo, Tituba was like the mother duck. Abigail and the others all toddled after her like ducklings, asking her to conjure and work her voodoo magic. Due to this, Tituba had planted the seed that would blossom into the Salem Witch Trials. Arthur Miller wrote, “You beg me to conjure Abby! She beg me make charm”(Miller). If she hadn’t

If there isn't a child yet, may his wife never bear one! I know you can do it! Everyone says you are the most awesome of witches!"pg 86 This is what the residents in Salem led to think of Tituba. But was she really a witch, or was she evil like how the Puritans viewed them? Did she use her power to harm people or to comfort people? Did her actions strike sickness or to cure them?

Leo Tolstoy, author of the critically acclaimed novel War and Peace, wrote, “It’s too easy to criticize a man when he’s out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else’s mistakes.” Throughout history, social pariahs have served as scapegoats for the privileged; perhaps the most notorious--and treacherous--example of this were the Salem Witch Trials, where vengeance forced blame and death upon usually low-tiered citizens. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Parris’ slave Tituba confesses to witchcraft in order to escape death, while also recognizing the immense power she previously could never dream of having. It is undeniable that Tituba’s accusations and lies perpetuated the hysteria: she is not entirely blameless. However, the reader must also acknowledge the circumstances leading up to her wrongdoing in order to understand why Tituba’s innocence truly outweighs her guilt: the way in which Tituba is regarded as a slave speaks to the traumatizing powerlessness that she faced; her paganistic religion presented a rare opportunity for Tituba to attain trust and amusement from the girls; and she needed to lie and falsely accuse others so that she could both escape death and gain newfound freedoms.

It might appear as if Tituba is the one who is most responsible for the witchcraft hysteria in Salem. Tituba said, “No,no, chicken blood. I give she chicken blood!” (1109). She had given Abigail blood to drink so Abigail could casts a curse that could kill Elizabeth Proctor. If Tituba had never given Abigail the blood, the girls would have never gone to the forest to conjure spirits. Mrs. Putnam said, “Tituba knows how to speak to the dead, Mr. Parris” (1095). Mrs. Putnam had lost seven children soon after their births which made her believe that there was witchcraft involved in the death of her babies. Mrs. Putnam sent her only daughter to go to Tituba to conjure up the spirits of all her dead children. Clearly, if Tituba had not tried to

As the story of Tituba unfolds, it reveals a strong and kind hearted young woman, very different from the Tituba we meet in The Crucible. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem unveils for the reader, Tituba's life, loves, and losses. Her long and arduous journey through life is inspired by her many female counterparts, yet also hindered by her insatiable weakness for men, who also press upon her the realities of life.

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a series of trials in which twenty-four people were killed after being accused of practicing witchcraft. These trials were caused by different social climates of the area including the very strong lack of a governor, the split between Salem Village and Salem Town, and the strict puritan lifestyle during the time period. Tituba, the black slave, was a foreigner from Barbados. Her role in society was to take care of Mr. Parris’s family. Tituba’s situation contributed to her role in the witch trials because Mr. Parris promised her freedom if she confessed guilty. Tituba also realized that with her false confession of being a witch also helped keep her life, therefore she accused other people in the village

One can clearly see how the mythology has evolved since 1692 to more closely embody the fears of society. This manifestation of the human psyche now takes the form out of the shadowy fears parents have when they leave their small children's care to the hands of strangers; the other which exists outside the microcosm of home and family. While this may seem to be a wholly modern phenomenon, the bones of such fears instilled in modern parents can be found in the mythology of the Salem witch trials The most prodigious myth concerning the Salem witch trials centers around one woman, Tituba, the slave from Barbados belonging to Reverend Paris, and later a confessed

The young girls accused a slave of the Parris’s by the name of Tituba, a homeless beggar Sarah Good, and an older, poor woman by the name of Sara Osborn. They were brought before Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne for questioning and to see if there were other witches in the community. In the questioning the two Sarahs denied guilt but Tituba confessed hoping to save herself as acting as an informer.

As a child, Tituba was taken captive and sold into slavery. She was between the ages of 12 and 17 when she became a slave in the Parris house.("Tituba") Tituba married another Indian slave, John, in 1689. She also had a daughter, Violet, that lived in the Parris's house with her. According to law2.unmkc.edu, "Tituba made herself a likely target for witchcraft accusations when shortly after Parris's daughter, Betty, began having strange fits and symptoms, she participated in the preparation of a 'witchcake' (a mixture of rye and Betty's urine, cooked and fed to a dog, in the belief that the dog would then reveal the identity of Betty's afflicter." Samuel Parris, Tituba's employer, was extremely angry when he found out about Tituba making the cake, so he beat her until she confessed to being a witch. Tituba was the first Salem witch to confess and she most likely confessed to avoid punishment. In her confession, Tituba named several other witches, which managed to help her avoid going to trial. During the trials, a Tituba tried to recant her earlier confession. This attempted recantation angered Samuel Parris and he refused to get her out of prison. After spending over a year in jail Tituba was bought by an unknown person. It is also unknown what happened to Tituba after she began her new life.

In the book The Salem Witch Trials, 1692 it was said that Tituba, a slave and Barbados native, confessed to being a witch. She described four other witches but could not name them. Her confession included the statement that she had tried to kill the young girls while in her specter form. In her confession, Tituba described the devil as “...a tall man in a black suit who had a yellow bird, and he carried a book he urged Tituba to sign” (Findling 160). Findling wrote the devil promised Tituba nice rewards if she obeyed him. However, he also threatened to hurt her if she disobeyed him. On February twenty-sixth of the same year, Mary Sibley asked Tituba to make a witch cake. Mary Sibley was the aunt of Mary Walcott who was one of the young girls suffering from hysteria. The cake that Tituba baked was made from children’s urine, baked in a fire, and fed to the dog of the Parris family. The family’s dog was claimed to be a familiar, a messenger to a witch from the devil. Suddenly, the young girls were able to name two other witches, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. The cake was supposedly the reason for the clarification of the witches identities (Findling 160-161). Unlike Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne both denied the claims against them stating that they were witches (Jones n. pag.). All three women were arrested on account of practicing witchcraft (Findling 161). They were

That was a quote from Mrs Putnam. I think the fact that she has lost 7 babies makes her think it is work of the devil trying to punish the “good”. Once everyone believed it was the work of the devil, they blamed Tituba who is only low class person in the household and her being a black slave makes it easy for everyone to blame her because as she doesn’t have any power or authority she won’t react and her coming from a completely different culture to than the people in Salem makes the believe that she is affected by the witch and devil.

In the community of Salem if someone like Tituba looked out of place then they would be target of witchcraft. One reason that Tituba was such an easy target was because she was

The salem witch trials started with mis understood fortune telling, over extradition, enemies in the town, and games from girls that took a wrong turn. The Salem Witch trials were a dark time where people were uneducated, only believing in opinions and not facts. Going by words of girls than actual supportive evidence. People abused the word of God and used and abused the innocence of children to destroy their rivals.

One of the reasons that I chose to read this book was because I had prior knowledge of the Salem Witch Trials from reading The Crucible in high school. Reading The Crucible helped me when I read In the Devil’s Snare because I recognized a lot of the people’s names. In particular, I recognized the name of Titbua. Samuel Pairs’ daughter and niece accused Tituba for bewitching them. Tituba was believed to have had known people who were witches, but she denied being one. It is interesting to note that In the Devil’s Snare refers to Tituba as Reverend Pairs’s Indian Slave, when I read The Crucible and saw the movie; I always believed that Tituba was African. Norton states that “Many scholars have addressed these questions…. Every surviving piece of contemporary evidence identifies her as an Indian. Later tradition transformed her into an African or half African slave.” Since Tituba was an Indian this

In Maryse Conde novel, I Tituba Black Witch of Salem, Conde tells the story of Tituba a woman condemned for witchcraft in Salem. Conde opens the novel with story of Tituba’s mother, Abena taken from Africa and raped on a ship for the island of Barbados. Conde uses Tituba’s violent conception and racial identity to foretell Tituba’s struggles with a patriarchal society, Christianity and race. First sentence of the novel states, “Abena, my mother, was raped by an English sailor on the deck of Christ the King…”(Conde). Conde stresses Tituba’s racial identity as a mulatto through Abena and the contrast to the English sailor.