What Caused the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria? Essay Example

📌Category: History
📌Words: 818
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 08 June 2022

Controlled by fear and being cursed to human nature, we look back to see why humans believe in the ideology that we as a race from birth are inherently bad as we take a look back into time into the Salem witch trials. The Salem witch trials started in 1692, the people that inhabited Salem were Puritans. The Puritans main way and purpose in life was god, they would even kill if the bible told them to. In the bible, in the 17th century witchcraft was a serious crime it stated “Thought shalt not suffer a witch to live.”(background essay). This caused people to get hysterical and start killing innocent girls and men accused of witchcraft and executed by some of the most gruesome ways to die. For example some accused of witchcraft and convicted were put to death, by getting crushed by multiple rocks until they were crushed ,burnt into ashes , or drowned to death. What caused the Hysteria over Salem and eventually led them to the Salem Witch trials...Looking back we can see some of the reasons they were led to killing innocent people thought to be witches, as we can see looking back through documents and research we could conclude that they were controlled by the fear, lies told by the afflicted girls, and the social status of individuals and the oppressed.

Controlled by fear the Puritans did something unforgivable to the innocent, but what caused the substantial amount of fear it took for them to kill innocent people? From even interpreting graphs and data you interpret how much fear they felt.(Doc A) As we know that they didn’t always have concrete proof so they made monthly intervals of when they executed them. They made a really unfair system. Their ideology was if they were accused and convicted of witchcraft and didn’t  die from the toture/execution they were obviously a witch. If they died then they were basically a sacrifice, counted off as not a witch, or a witch that just died of execution. As we can also see in (Doc A and Doc C) we can see they were controlled by their own fear so much that they convicted a nine year old Bridgett Bishop and she was hanged  June 10, 2021. Most of this fear came from the lies told by the afflicted girls as they are the original people that started and paid the price of doing so.

The afflicted girls… Going back through the documents the main reason why the Salem witch trials even started, was because of the afflicted girls. They cascaded a series of events which one death they definitely caused led to many. A nine year old girl was accused of witchcraft allegedly, by the afflicted girls.(Doc C) These afflicted girls are the ones that started the rumors of possible witchcraft in Salem, and which led to the deaths of many and some were even the afflicted girls.  Some were aware of the terrible lie that these “afflicted” spread throughout Salem(Doc D). He was a historian and the mayor of Salem. Charles W. Upham speaks  upon the reasons why they must’ve done it. His statement was that the afflicted had a lust for power. Interpreting that the afflicted girls were a lot of the accusers we can come to a conclusion that they were a part of the oppressed and poor of Salem. Which led them to their eventual acting debut(Doc D) into gaining this lust for power. 

The afflicted girls were a large part of the accusers but a large part of the oppressed  and the fact that they were the ones that started the hysteria and fear. Depending on your social status it had a large part to do with the Salem witch trials. A lot of the reason why the poor and others that were oppressed also saw this opportunity to get ahead of the higher social classes. Evidence shows that most of the accusers were on the western side of the Salem village and quite a surplus of them were on that side. Most of the Accused of witchcraft was on the eastern side of Salem that was more wealthy.(Doc E) Coming to a conclusion that the poor saw this as an opportunity to take power over the rich. The afflicted girls were grouped in with the poor and the oppressed because they were girls. Being a girl in Puritan society was nothing good with barely having more rights than a slave. These afflicted girls probably took the opportunity to gain a little bit of power with little rights they had at these times. 

It is true that other causes may help  explain the hysteria  for example, some other causes could’ve been the over religious views the Puritans had during those times. They could have been blinded by their own religion and even to the point where their own religion led them to paranoia that witches actually might be real. However, what caused the Salem witch hysteria  looking back there could have been multiple reasons but the ones that we can conclude through going through the documents are the fear spread through the town of Salem, the lies told by afflicted, and the social statuses and and the oppressed of Salem.

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