Preview

Abigail Williams Trial

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
388 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Abigail Williams Trial
During the March of last year, the small town of Salem had claimed to have been seized by a sickness that couldn’t be cured simply by antibiotics. Witchcraft had supposedly been expelled among the town and there was very little that could be done to stop it. Twenty people were executed and 200 accused because of the claimed affiliation between them and witchcraft. The hunt for witches first began when a group of young girls were believed to be experiencing symptoms of bewitchment. The children were screaming, thrashing, falling on the ground, and appeared to be suffering immense pain. The disturbed girls, led by Abigail Williams, began to claim that they “saw people with the Devil”. They believed the accused were harming them through black magic. Throughout the months, there had been many trials and many of the accused were found guilty. The most notable accusation was of John Proctor and his wife. Abigail claimed …show more content…
She also reportedly stole all of Reverend Parris’ (her uncle) money and took it with her. It is suggested that she ran away because of her relationship with John Proctor. During the trial that described the falsehood of the witch hunt, Proctor confessed to committing adultery with Abigail. When his wife was called in to clarify the confession, she denied. John Proctor was found guilty. He was given a chance to confess to his crime, but chose to hang instead. Upon his hanging, he recited the Lord’s Prayer. Reciting the Lord’s Prayer is impossible for a witch to do. John was able to surprisingly deliver it. After the trials officially ended, there has still been controversy regarding the legitimacy of them. And it still remains a controversy today. Many people believe the trials were done to be attention seeking, others believe they were purely political. Despite the skepticism, everybody seems to agree that the trials were truly a

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    John Proctor was the first male to be named a witch during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. When the hysteria first began in Salem village, Proctor believed the afflicted girls accusing many of the villagers of witchcraft were frauds and liars. He spoke openly against the accusations and scoffed at the idea of witchcraft. It wasn’t until Proctor’s wife Elizabeth, who was pregnant at the time, was accused of witchcraft on April 4th and examined in court that John’s own witchcraft accusations came out. His accusers, Abigail Williams and Mary Walcott, stated that Proctor’s spirit tormented them and pinched…

    • 417 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sarah Good was guiltless woman put on trial and killed just because mischievous girls had suspicions about her. This primary resource, her examination shows how she did not admit to anything but was still sentenced to prison. She repeatedly tells the examiners she is not practicing witchcraft, and how she follows God, yet was still found guilty with no cold hard evidence to back up the allegations. This resource tells us about the era in which The Salem witchcraft trials were going on. It depicts a mass hysteria. It is important to recognize the witchcraft trials and the documents from the time period so future generations see the mistakes past generations made, and learn from them. This document and many more relate to how a society killed off a number of innocent people just because they did not fully understand what was going on. The Salem society saw what was happening and did nothing to stop the convictions and killings. A small amount of people actually stood up for this immortality. Our generation needs to recognize this so we do not repeat histories mistakes and kill innocent…

    • 471 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Dbq Salem Witch Crisis

    • 325 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Salem Witch Crisis began during the winter of 1691-1692. In Salem Village, Massachusetts, when Betty Parris, the nine-year-old daughter of the village’s minister, Samuel Parris, and his niece, Abigail Williams, fell strangely ill. The girls complained of pinching, prickling sensations, knifelike pains, and the feeling of being choked. Some weeks later, three ore girls showed similar symptoms. Doctors began to suspect that witchcraft was the reason of the girl’s symptoms.…

    • 325 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Salem 1692 Book Review

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages

    What truly happened amid Salem 1692? Numerous inquiries still frequent numerous Americans at the outset of the twenty-first century. Amid 1692 the general population of Massachusetts were living in trepidation about sinister burdens, similar to the same way other people feels about terrorism around the globe today. Everything about witchcraft flare-up amid that year was weird. Numerous reactions to the data were never replied amid the late seventeenth-century when the witchcraft emergency happened. Amid this time there were horrifyingly Indian assaults that principally frightened northern boondocks of pilgrims, displaced people, furthermore the principle informers of witches these gatherings all fled to groups like Salem. Be that as it may, on the other side settlement's pioneers were extremely guarded about inability to secure the outskirts they chiefly thought how God's kin could be terrified of all the otherworldly alarms. Mary Beth Norton the writer of this book is a Professor of American History at Cornell University she's composed a few books that needs to do with history like Founding Mothers and Fathers, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women and different books.…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The purpose of this book was to examine the history and social life of Salem Village to try to figure out what was the cause of the events that occurred there. I believe that the authors achieved their objective at least they did to me. Boyer and Nissenbaum's explanation for the outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem hinges on an understanding of the economic,…

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the town of Salem, Massachusetts, during the summer months of 1692, over 200 people were accused of being bewitched and associating with the Devil. Within the matter of months, 20 people were put to death and seven died in jail. The event, which has come to be known as the Salem Witch Trials, stopped after September 22, when eight people were hanged, on what was named Gallows Hill, an event that marked the decline of the Salem Witch paranoia. Although the paranoia was such a drastically important event, there still isn’t a clear cut answer as to why the trials began, occurred, and ended so suddenly. However, there are speculations, and knowledgeable reasoning as to why the trials might of occurred, one of the most widely accepted hypothesis is that the town’s population had accidentally ingested a type of hallucinogens, and that the summer heat may have made some of the population more prone to the effects of these drugs, creating mass hallucinations.…

    • 531 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Salem Witch Trials are known as a series of people being accused and prosecuted of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts beginning in February 1692 until May 1693. The trials began after a group of girls claimed that they were possessed by the devil. Several local women were accused of witchcraft and this began the wave of hysteria that would forever haunt Salem and leave a painful legacy for a long time to come. Nearly every major school of historians has attempted to explain the answer to the mystery of the trials, trying to understand why they occurred. From Marxists who blame class conflict, to Freudians who believe in mass hysteria, the more ecologically based historians who put the blame on hallucinogenic ergot fungus, and now more…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In a plain meeting house in 1692 a woman stands before her judges. She is accused of tormenting innocent girls with an unseen evil. Standing there, the poor woman is ridiculed in front of her whole town. She is surrounded by people accusing her of witchcraft based only on the hallucinations of attention-hungry schoolgirls. It makes us wonder was there no justice? It did not matter; superstition got the best of them. Eventually these superstitions claimed twenty-five lives, shattered the community, and forever shaped the American social conscience. The combination of fear and superstition in Salem in 1692 caused a devastating witch-hunt, leading us to cry out for some old-fashioned justice. There…

    • 252 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In 1692, an event called the Salem Witch Trials occurred, because of this, the people from a village called Salem, Massachusetts were fearful because they could be accused a witch. This all started when a group of young girls began to act very strange. The behaviors of the girls’ ranged from, screaming, copying body movements, pain, falling on the floor, twitching, and many other symptoms.…

    • 247 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Salem Witch Trials

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Salem Witch Trials has been a debatable topic for many historians enamored by its deviation from the normal as seen in Europe or other European Colonies in North America. As presented in Bryan Le Beau’s book The Story of the Salem Witch Trials, the story of Salem is unique in that it is centered primarily around the communities incapability to harmonize with one another. In the first two chapters, the book introduces its readers to a brief history of witchcraft trials, including how they began in Europe and followed colonists to the New World. In chapter three, the book describes Salem as it was before the trials and its ultimate path to the devastation it eventually created. It describes the division of the community and how that led to “…the point of institutional, demographic, and economic polarization” (p.50). Le Beau’s thesis is that “New England communities…suffered from the economic, social, political, and religious dislocations of the modernization process of the Early Modern Period, but to a greater extent than others,” he believed, “Salem village fell victim to warring factions, misguided leadership, and geographical limitations that precluded its dealing effectively with those problems” (p.43). The chapters following Le Beau’s thesis chronologically present the Salem Witch Craft trials and what was left in the wake the realization that followed.…

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Bibliography: Adams, Gretchen A. The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.…

    • 2692 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    To begin with, Abigail Williams starts the accusations of witchcraft in order to fulfill her ulterior motives. We first see hints of her motives when Abigail tells John Proctor, a married man under whom she had worked that, “I am waitin’ for you every night”(1099). While Abigail worked under John and Elizabeth Proctor, she had developed feelings for John. Elizabeth removes her from the house, which angers Abigail deeply. Proctor and Abigail see each other again when John goes to retrieve his maid Mary Warren. We can infer that Abigail continues to have for feelings for…

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Witch FRQ

    • 511 Words
    • 2 Pages

    During this period witchcraft was considered a serious crime throughout much of Europe, in both catholic and protestant areas. Starting in 1500 there was a dramatic increase in the number of accusations and convictions of witchcraft which persisted through much of the 16th and 17th century before declining towards the latter portion of this period. The rise of witch hunts was spurred on by misogynistic ideas, religious beliefs and, social political and economic turmoil in Europe, while a myriad of factors contributed to the decline of witch hunts, from the emergence of the scientific revolution to growing continental stability.…

    • 511 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    She was a two-faced person who did not care about the outcome of her actions, only if it involved herself. Also known as Reverend Parris' niece, Abigail served as the Proctors' servant before Elizabeth fired her for having an affair with John. Abigail and John Proctor had been lovers but that soon ended. "John, I am waiting for you every night" (Page 176). Abigail's jealousy towards Elizabeth proctor caused her to resort to blackmail. She couldn't take the fact that John no longer loved her the way he did, and that he wanted to pretend that nothing ever happen. "Give me a word John, a soft word" (Page 176). Abigail not only went against Elizabeth, but against anyone she could think of that she did not care for. As the thought's and ideas of witchcraft and devil worship spread through Salem, and words of other with-hunts filled newspaper, Abigail had found an easier way to get rid of her rivals without hurting her name even more. By accusing them or convincing others to accuse, Abigail was able to place many innocent people on trial for…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the year of 1697, the town of Salem, Massachusetts lost a member of the Puritan Community. Her name is Abigail Williams, the niece of Reverend Parris. She confessed about dancing in the forest, when Reverend Parris saw from his own eyes. The cause of Abigail Williams’ death was about the slander of witchcraft. She went to court to confess about accusing of witchcraft, but refused to confess. She was hanged after. Abigail Williams was an orphan that was careless about her actions. Her parents died due to the killing of Native Americans. She lived with minister, Reverend Parris, while working for John Proctor. The word spread around the town about the tension between Elizabeth Proctor and Abigail Williams. The wife of John Proctor, Elizabeth…

    • 176 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays