The Crucible
203 Words
The Salem Witch Trials refer to a famous episode from the American colonial period in 1692 in the village of Salem (present-day Massachusetts). As a side effect of internal struggles among settler families and the Puritan fanaticism they professed, almost cloaked in paranoia, 19 people accused of witchcraft—fourteen women and five men—were sentenced to death, and a much larger number were imprisoned. The number of those accused of witchcraft in these trials may have fluctuated between 200 and 300.
Many theories have attempted to explain why the Salem community exploded into such a frenzy of witchcraft and supposed demonic disturbances. The most widespread maintains that the Puritans, who ruled the Massachusetts Bay Colony virtually without royal control from 1630 until the promulgation of Magna Carta in 1692, were going through a period of mass hallucinations and hysteria caused by their religious fanaticism. Most modern historians find this explanation simplistic, to say the least. Other theories rely on analyses of child abuse, divination invoking the devil, ergotism (intoxication with fermented rye bread containing chemicals similar to LSD), the Putnam family plot to destroy the rival Porter family, and still others allude to the theme of the "social strangulation" of women.
- Writer
