After reading A Break with Charity by Ann Rinaldi, the reader gains knowledge of the Salem Witch Trials through a young woman who experienced the commotion first hand. The book describes the accusers, the accused and why they were accused, while giving the reader insight on the emotion that spread through Salem as the trials unfolded. The Salem Witch Trials began among a group of eight girls aged 11 to 20. Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam were the “ringleaders” of the group and were the first to fall into illness. Under this “illness” they moaned and shrieked for no reason, groveled and writhed and began to act as animals.
Background: The Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 have been studied by many historians looking for the complex social, political, and psychological determinants behind the community wide hysteria that led to the death of 20 innocent Puritans. Ergot poisoning has been put forth by some as a previously unsuspected cause of the bizarre behaviors of the young adolescent girls who accused the townsfolk of witchcraft. During the early winter of 1692 two young girls became inexplicably ill and started having fits of convulsion, screaming, and hallucinations. Unable to find any medical reason for their condition the village doctor declared that there must be supernatural forces of witchcraft at work. This began an outbreak of hysteria that would result in the arrest of over one hundred-fifty people and execution of twenty women and men.
Ruthlessly accusing others of witchcraft she changes her story as a desperate act of self-preservation, “I danced with the devil; I saw him; I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss his hand. I saw Sarah Good with the devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the devil!” Abigail develops a chant of names, becoming ‘enraptured, as though in a pearly light’ demonstrating her lust for power and attention. As early as Scene one, we learn of the motives behind Abigail’s actions as she tries to get the girls to agree on a story to protect herself.
The mother was found tampering with the child's feeding tube, trapping air bubbles in the feeding tube line making the child sicker. (Weintraub, 2007) Other victims who are now adults came to interview for this article only giving their first name or a different alias, telling the stories of a Münchausen by proxy childhood. 29 year old Bree came forth and stated ever since she could remember as a child, she has been sick till the age of 18 years old. She remembers a taste of purple gum favor in her food. In result it was found she was inducing emetic ipecac, which was being prepared in her food.
The people of the community find out about the young girls practicing witchcraft, which scared the girls, because they risked being convicted and sentenced to death for using witchcraft. Abigail led the group of girls to accusing several people who supposedly were allied with the Devil, and the girls would see the accused in their dreams speaking with the Devil. As defined from the Oxford Dictionary, crucible can be referred to as “a ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures” or as “a situation of severe trial, or in which different elements interact, leading to the creation of something new”. A severe trial, indeed. The community of Salem was a tight-knit community where the people believed that keeping their good reputations was considerably important in their lives.
For example in the first scene of ‘The Crucible’ where Parris is trying to get to the bottom of what Abigail, Betty and the other girls did in the forest. Abigail insists that they were just dancing but Parris is unsure. This first scene makes the audience ask questions like: Is it the witchcraft that it’s rumoured to be? Is Abby telling the truth? And what is wrong with Betty?
The witch trials in Early Modern Europe came in waves and then subsided. There were trials in the 15th and early 16th centuries, but then the witch scare went into decline, before becoming a major issue again and peaking in the 17th century. During the 17th century, belief in witchcraft was very popular. Due to the spread of witch hunting books such as the Malleus Maleficarum, people quickly became engrossed with the thought of witchcraft. What had previously been a belief that some people possessed supernatural abilities (which were sometimes used to protect the people) now became a sign of a pact between the people with supernatural abilities and the devil.
The Romantic Period was the first in which interference of this type, known as the subjective point of view, was being accepted in literature. In addition, another element of romanticism, the love of the supernatural, is seen when Kovalyov concludes that person to blame for the loss of his nose was Mrs. Podtochin, who “must have hired some witches to spirit it away” (59). Mrs. Podtochin had asked the Major to marry her daughter several times, and he believes that his hesitation to propose was misunderstood and that the staff officer’s wife is now exacting her revenge through witchcraft.
It makes perfect sense as to why Miller wrote The Crucible allegorically to these events, 1953 was a time in which American fear and madness concerning communism was frankly getting out of control, just as the experiences in Salem were in the 1690s. The Crucible is a historically fictitious adaption of the Salem Witch Trials which as previously stated, was an episode of unjust accusations of witchcraft/devil worship carried out by a group of female teens. In the play, the group of accusing teens is led by girl named Abigail Williams. In order to refocus the “heat” on another source in order to save herself from trouble, her and her peers wrongfully stage a phenomenon of witchcraft in Salem, producing mass panic in the community for months on end. It got so bad in fact, that at one point Abigail implied that even the official court judges could be guilty of wicked doings; “Let you beware, Mr. Danforth.
The girls did this to keep the attention off of them and avoid punishment. These harsh accusations on innocent people caused twenty deaths in their village. Abigail then became one of the many “witnesses” in the court. As soon as someone starts to suspect her of being a witch or performing witchcraft, she always manages to turn the blame back on them, whether it’s through lying or exaggerating a mysterious action. For example, she outs the blame on Tituba, who confesses to performing witchcraft.