Why did people in the Salem Witch Trials accuse others of witchcraft?
Because $hitz and giggles tole himto If I had a dollar for every joke answer I've found.... if it wasn't summer, I'd do the math It is not clear why the accusations were made. We know that the girls were either faking or genuinly afflicted by something, but not witchcraft. The people accused in Salem do not possess a defining trait, except that they lived in or used to live in Essex County.
And everyone involved lived in or used to live in Essex. It is often thought by the populace that outsiders of the town and people who never went to church were accused. But John and Elizabeth Proctor were well-loved and respected and many agreed with Martha Corey's label of "Gospel Woman.
After much convincing and hard work by Salem school teacher Paula Keene, Representatives J. Michael Ruane and Paul Tirone and others, the names of all those not previously listed were added to this resolution. When it was finally signed on October 31, 2001, by Governor Jane Swift, more than 300 years later, all were finally proclaimed innocent.
The story of the witchcraft accusations, trials and executions has captured the imagination of writers and artists in the centuries since the event took place, many of which interpretations have taken liberties with the facts of the historical episode in the name of literary and/or artistic license. Occurring at the intersection between a gradually disappearing medieval past and an emerging enlightenment and dealing with torture and confession, such interpretations often reveal the allegedly clear boundaries between the medieval and the postmedieval as cultural constructions. The cause of the symptoms of those who claimed affliction continues to be a subject of interest.
Various medical and psychological explanations for the observed symptoms have been explored by researchers, including psychological hysteria in response to Indian attacks, convulsive ergotism caused by eating rye bread made from grain infected by the fungus Claviceps purpurea (a natural substance from which LSD is derived),93 an epidemic of bird-borne encephalitis lethargica, and sleep paralysis to explain the nocturnal attacks alleged by some of the accusers. 94 Other modern historians are less inclined to believe in biological explanations, preferring instead to explore motivations such as jealousy, spite, and a need for attention to explain behavior they contend was simply acting. The Examination of Bridget Bishop, April 19, 1692.
“Examination and Evidence of Some Accused Witches in Salem, 1692. The Examination of Sarah Good, March 1, 1692. “Examination and Evidence of Some the Accused Witches I Salem, 1692.
Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials. Atheneum: New York. Boyer, Paul & Nissenbaum, Stephen.
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA. Brown, David C.. A Guide to the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692.
Brown: Washington Crossing, PA. Burns, Margo & Rosenthal, Bernard. "Examination of the Records of the Salem Witch Trials".
William and Mary Quarterly, 2008, Vol. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.