The Effect of the Witch Trails in Salem

The Effect of the Witch Trails in Salem

The Crucible is a play by Arthur Miller written in 1952 dramatizes one of the darkest episodes in American history: the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. It is based on the events surrounding the witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Miller wrote about the event as an allegory of McCarthyism happened in the United States in 1950. The Crucible is a play about the witch-hunts in early modern times, but it's also a piece about social phenomena that can occur in our time again. It is against fear and mass hysteria, against denunciation, ideological spying and the abuse of political power (McGill, 1981).

The Salem witchcraft trials allude to a famous episode of the period of colonization of the United States in 1692 in the village of Salem (present state of Massachusetts), in which, as a side effect of family infighting and fanaticism colonial Puritans coated paranoia, were sentenced to death 25 people accused of witchcraft, whereas mostly were women, people who were imprisoned and many more. The number of defendants in these trials for witchcraft could fluctuate between 150 and 200 and even a much larger number if we consider the cases of entrapment.

The outburst that is revealed in Act I shows that Abigail spent first act in desperation regarding the possibility of disgrace in the forest with her friends. She basically confesses to consort with the devil, which in terms of Salem's theology means that she was basically free from guilt. (See appendix: 1.1)

Many theories have attempted to explain why the community of Salem exploded in this delusion of witches and demonic disturbances. The most widespread insists that the Puritans, who ruled the colony of Massachusetts Bay virtually no real control from 1630 ...