according to miller, what caused the witch hunts? according to miller, what caused the witch hunts?

The drastic effects of the Little Ice Age reached a height between 1560 and 1650, which happened to be the same period in which the number of European witch hunts reached their height. Parris' sermons in late 1691 warning of Satan's influence in town is also not known, but it seems likely that his fears were known in his household. The latter was the greatest evil of the system, for a victim might be forced to name acquaintances, who were in turn coerced into naming others, creating a long chain of accusations. The Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation heightened the fear of witchcraft by promoting the idea of personal piety (the individual alone with his or her Bible and God), which enhanced individualism while downplaying community. It might have been as simple as one person blaming his misfortune on another. When Arthur Miller published The Crucible in the early 1950s, he simply outdid the historians at their own game.. They were a wide cultural, social, political phenomenon. In other words, there was how things actually happened during the Salem Witch Trials, and there was how Miller wrote about them, taking lots of liberties to tell this story through a prism that made sense to him. Countries that were predominantly Catholic such as Spain, did not endure the scourge of witch-hunting to the same extent as those that experienced religious unrest. When they did accuse witches, Calvinists generally hunted fellow Calvinists, whereas Roman Catholics largely hunted other Roman Catholics. Tituba was accused by the young girls of appearing to them (as a spirit), which amounted to an accusation of witchcraft. For The Crucible, Miller aged Abigail up from her actual age of 11 to a more easily sexualized 17, while aging down John Procter, who was historically 60 at the time the trials went down to 35. Moving crabwise across the profusion of evidence, I sensed that I had at last found something of myself in it, and a play began to accumulate around this man. Indeed, Germany, one of the central countries of the Protestant Reformation, is often referred to as the focal point of the European witch hunts. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Both he and you are wrong. One was Elizabeth (Betty) Parris, the 9-year-old daughter of Rev. How Does Arthur Miller Use Witch Hunts In The Crucible. Another accusation that often accompanied maleficium was trafficking with evil spirits. In the play "The Crucible," Arthur Miller uses a great trial in the Salem witch trials to describe how he felt during the Red Scare in the 1950's. The Red Scare was a national hunt for Communists, or "Reds" as they were called. This was a time when paranoia, hysteria, and deceit gripped the Puritan towns of New England. Young women were sometimes accused of infanticide, but midwives and nurses were not particularly at risk. The next day, Betty and Abigail named Tituba as a cause of their behavior. It all began in 1692 and 1693 when Salem in the United States . Vengeful witch hunters left no time to spare when making accusations on their neighborhood enemies. Cotton Mather, a prolific author and well-known preacher, wrote this account in 1693, a year after the trials ended. What happened, we should ask, that enabled such widespread, fallacious, and at times frantic persecution and prosecution to take place? There were additional hunts in Spanish America, where the European pattern of accusations continued even though the differences between the folklore of the Europeans and Native Americans introduced some minor variations into the accusations. Witches were considered Satans followers, members of an antichurch and an antistate, the sworn enemies of Christian society in the Middle Ages, and a counter-state in the early modern period. So for a brief explanation, McCarthyism was carried out under senator Joseph McCarthy during 1950-1954 against alleged communist in the US government and in other institutions. Tituba was among the first three people accused of being a witch during the Salem witch trials of 1692. He says they were caused by everyone being paranoid of the witches. They believed that witches were quite real and a gateway into the dark side, the Devil and all that. Sermons and didactic treatises, including devil books warning of Satans power, spread both the terror of Satan and the corresponding frantic need to purge society of him. Jone Johnson Lewis is a women's history writer who has been involved with the women's movement since the late 1960s. In 1692 hundreds of people were sitting in jail for being witches, but none of them were really witches. The doctor diagnosed the cause of the afflictions as "Evil Hand.". The Crucible shows how fear can inspire hysteria, intolerance, and paranoia and mirrored what was happening in America in the 1950s when a different kind of witch hunt was afoot. In Mexico the Franciscan friars linked indigenous religion and magic with the Devil; prosecutions for witchcraft in Mexico began in the 1530s, and by the 1600s indigenous peasants were reporting stereotypical pacts with the Devil. Although accusations of witchcraft in contemporary cultures provide a means to express or resolve social tensions, these accusations had different consequences in premodern Western society where the mixture of irrational fear and a persecuting mentality led to the emergence of the witch hunts. Tituba, also known as Tituba Indian, was an enslaved person and servant whose birth and death dates are unknown. Millers play helps one understand what the Salem Witch Trials did to peoples emotions and mentalities. As just one example, the king of Italy, Charlemagne, dismissed the concept of witchcraft as a pagan superstition and ordered the death penalty for whoever executed someone because they considered them to be a witch. Conventional wisdom has it that mankind has evolved so far that the idea of targeting innocents is no longer an issue; however, Senator McCarthy and targeting of innocent Muslims after 9/11 remind us that witch hunts still exists in modern times. I had not approached the witchcraft out of nowhere or from purely social and political considerations. Rev. In the writing of Arthur Miller he chose to place the focus of the book around the witch trials that took place in Salem in the 1400s. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Tituba was questioned for two more days. Most Americans knowledge of the seventeenth century comes from heavily mythologized events: the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, Pocahontas purportedly saving Captain John Smith from execution in early Virginia, and the Salem witch trials of 1692. Analysis. The hunts were not pursuits of individuals already identified as witches but efforts to identify those who were witches. It certainly was not deemed to be a threat, even by the leaders of the Catholic Church, who simply denied its existence. All three of the accused were examined the next day at Nathaniel Ingersoll's tavern in Salem Village by local magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne. ", Latest answer posted October 02, 2020 at 10:46:39 AM. This idea that when trouble comes, particularly when it comes to a man whos just trying to get laid, it comes at the hands of an unstable woman who should never be believed. In pointing out this paradox, Miller suggests that the witch hunts exposed the failure of the Puritan theocracy. Whether she was aware of Rev. The Salem witch trials end up being a crucible, that is, a time of great testing and purifying, for the townspeople. Cotton Mathers account of the witch trials reinforced colonial New Englanders view of themselves as a chosen generation of men. Prosecutions of witches in Austria, Poland, and Hungary took place as late as the 18th century. The overwhelming majority of processes, however, went no farther than the rumour stage, for actually accusing someone of witchcraft was a dangerous and expensive business. The Puritans were marked by inflexibility and extremism. *** Beyond Arthur Millers The Crucible, numerous dramatic presentations offer insights into irrational human fear. The play is about human weakness, hypocrisy, and vindictiveness. How do you think Miller uses setting to help create mood in Act I? The witch-trials provided release and the outcome was tragically unpleasant. The story in The Crucible begins with how the paranoia and the following witch hunt started in Salem. They were a wide cultural, social, political phenomenon. The Salem witch scare had complex social roots beyond the communitys religious convictions. Read the document introduction and transcript and apply your knowledge of American history in order to answer these questions. Little is known of Tituba's background or even origin. Proctor house. An additional activity would be to ask students to compare two or more recorded or live productions of Arthur Millers The Crucible to the written text. Older women were more frequently accused of casting malicious spells than were younger women, because they had had more time to establish a bad reputation, and the process from suspicion to conviction often took so long that a woman might have aged considerably before charges were actually advanced. But since the controversy included withholding salary and payment in firewood, and Parris complained about the effect on his family, Tituba probably would also have felt the shortage of firewood and food in the house. Headley proceeds to talk about Millers other works, and how they basically all tell the story of The Crucible (and of his own marriage and relationship to Monroe) in different ways. These beliefs changed drastically, however, towards the end of the Middle Ages, as witchcraft came to be associated with heresy. She confessed to witchcraft and accused others. A combination of multiple different forces came together to create the circumstances in which these witch hunts took place, so there are numerous reasons to consider. Classical authors such as Aeschylus, Horace, and Virgil described sorceresses, ghosts, furies, and harpies with hideous pale faces and crazed hair; clothed in rotting garments, they met at night and sacrificed both animals and humans. Tituba later testified that she saw visions of the devil and witches swarming. For many of them the witch-hunt provided an opportunity to release themselves from their own guilt and vent their impure thoughts under the cloak of seeking absolution. The hunts were most severe from 1580 to 1630, and the last known execution for witchcraft was in Switzerland in 1782. Salem is an early example of what Miller saw around him and personally experienced in the 1950sthe communist witch hunts conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Latest answer posted November 22, 2020 at 10:36:50 AM. Arthur Miller in the play, The Crucible, suggests that people of society create a separation between outsiders and insiders of the town, often prosecuting the outsiders to make them stand out even more from society. Miller completely discounts the idea that these events are caused by supernatural forces, and instead seeks to show how everyday difference between the members of the Salem community and the all-common emotions of anger, envy and greed are responsible.