Satan in Salem

The Salem Witch Trials are known throughout the country as being the worst times in America. Though no one was ever burned at the stake, hundreds were hung during this scary time. Abigail Williams, the overzealous girl that started the Salem Witch Trials, in theory, killed many innocent people with her accusations. America has not been the same since. When watching The Crucible, one can see that Abigail Williams is a very troubled young girl. Though her age in the movie is six years older than her age during the actual trials, it is hard not to describe her imagination as wild. According to Adam Goodheart, “Nine-year-old Betty Paris, the parson’s daughter, and her 11-year old cousin, Abigail Williams, had always been model children, ‘well Educated and of good Behaviour,’ according to one chronicle. Soon, word spread through Salem: They had been bewitched” (46). Whether they were actually bewitched, or were just fighting evil within themselves, no one is sure. It could have been that they were unsure of the spirituality and decided to explore the other alternative. During one of the court cases, “Abigail recounted seeing Cloyce act as deacon at a satanic Sabbath ceremony behind the parsonage, where 40 witches drank a communion of blood. When Procter took the stand, Abigail reached out to strike her in the face, only to have her fist magically unclench in midair; as her fingers brushed against the older woman’s hood, Abigail howled in paid as if scorched” (Goodheart 46). In my opinion, after watching the movie and reading this article, Abigail plotted all of these things to make it seem like these women and men were witches. Anyone can go to strike someone and then unclench their fist, acting like an evil spirit did it. A big concern about these trials is why all of these clergymen and priests believed this eleven-year-old girl. “A preteen has little sense of consequences for herself, much less for another person, let alone an entire village or province. What she does have, though, is an acute appreciation of the struggle for power-and, quite often, a well-hone skill at manipulating those who hold authority” (Goodheart 47). Abigail Williams was able to manipulate a whole town into believing that evil was there. Why she was believed in the way she was, I am not sure. Goodheart states, “Once the Salem accusers had won credibility, it was as easy for them to point fingers at a rich man as a poor one” (47). If Williams did not like a person, she could accuse them of witchcraft and then they would die. It was as easy as that. The court cases were drug out. From what was seen in the movie, these cases were led by the accusers. In my opinion, it makes no sense for all of those girls to be in the room. Abigail was able to act as if she was being bewitched by the men and women during these trials. Her presence threw the noose around their necks for them. “Twenty men and women, ages 20 to 80, had been executed under the imprimatur of the highest officials in Massachusetts. Nineteen people were hanged, and one man was pressed to death with large stones in a failed attempt to extract a confession” (Goodheart 46). Twenty people were killed, but that was just in Salem. Abigail Williams killed twenty people with her false accusations. “The gaping villagers and horrified clerics saw witches in action-or saw the awful effects that their black magic was apparently having on Abigail and 12-year-old Ann Putnam Jr., a mesmerizing choreography of gestures and paroxysms” (Goodheart 46). Abigail would act as if she was being bewitched in order to accuse someone of witchcraft. She was apparently very good at it. These trials got out of hand, and they got out of hand fairly quickly. Goodheart states, “Witchcraft in Salem would perhaps have remained a parsonage-size-nightmare, though, had it not been for the adults. One moment children were playacting; the next, people’s grandparents were being publicly tortured to death” (47). All of these accusations and trials happened so quickly. With that being said, there were very little record of the trials at the time, and the records we do have are dramatized. “Legal documents do not exist for everyone who was accused of witchcraft, and the case records that exist are often incomplete. For example, some people were named as suspects in testimony but apparently were never formally charged. Estimates therefore vary as to the number of people accused of witchcraft in 1692” (Latner 138). It just goes to show how obsessed these people were in the trials. They were so involved that they weren’t interested in writing anything down. “Most narratives dramatically recount the events of 1692 as a constantly accelerating, relentless, and intense upheaval that brought widespread political, social, and economic disruption to New England” (Latner 137). Since then, we have found the pieces of records and have put them together in the best way possible. In no time, people were being accused left and right, and it was all because clergymen believed an eleven-year-old girl over everyone else. “Many 19th-and 20th-century popular accounts of the Salem trials harped on the judges’ superstitious ignorance, as if the 1692 hysteria were a stray pocket of medieval shadow amid the incipient dawn of the Enlightenment” (Goodheart 47). Even Goodheart realizes that the judges were ignorant in their decisions. All it takes is for a child to wrap someone around her finger. Not only was Salem affected by these trials and the witchcraft outbreak, but so was the rest of the world. “As many as 165 more, in two dozen villages and towns, had been publicly accused of sorcery; they ranged from an American Indian slave to one of the richest merchants in the colony” (Goodheart 46). No one was safe from this epidemic. It is almost as if this was a group hypnosis. Abigail Williams made these people believe in something that was not actually happening. “Arthur Miller, in the opening pages of The Crucible (1953), described the witch scare as a kind of reactionary political spasm in response to the changing conditions of early America, ‘a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom’” (Goodheart 46). At the time, America was changing. This outbreak of witchcraft seems to have been the result for that change. “The data confirm the idea that ‘Salem’ witchcraft extended well beyond the boundaries of Salem Village or Town. The 151 accused witches whose residence is known came from twenty-five communities in New England (twenty-six if we distinguish the partially autonomous parish of Salem Village from Salem town)” (Latner 138-139). Why the outbreak came from a child, I am not sure. It seems like it should have come from an adult over anything. “Chronologically, the first wave began with three initial complaints at the very end of February 1692, all involving residents of Salem Village. The number of accusations slowly increased, adding only four more victims throughout the month of March, making a total of seven accusations for the one-month period beginning at the end of February. But the outbreak escalated in April, with twenty-three new cases, and in May, with an additional thirty-nine charges. By the end of May, sixty-nine accused witches had been named and, likely, examined and jailed for further legal consideration. This represents 49 percent of the 142 victims for whom we have clear evidence of a date of accusation” (Latner 139). This is the effect that Abigail Williams had on the people of Salem and the rest of the world. Apparently, witchcraft wasn’t started in America. “The judges in Massachusetts, and probably also some of the accusers, were deeply influenced by accounts of a witch outbreak in distant Sweden some years earlier. Witchcraft was science, and vice versa” (Goodheart 47). It may have not started in America, but I am almost positive this is where it ended. Goodheart says something that is very interesting. He states, “Even after the Salem tumult subsided, very few New Englanders at any social level rejected the existence of witchcraft; many still maintained that Satan’s minions had been busy in Massachusetts, only among the accusers rather than the accused” (47). I agree. Abigail Williams was a deeply troubled girl who caused the deaths of many people. Anyone was at stake of being accused of witchcraft, which is what Goodheart believes ended the hysteria: “Indeed, what ultimately ended the witchcraft indictments may have been the growing fear that anybody might be next” (48). If that is the case, then it is better late than never to put a stop to this madness. Over the course of that one year, many innocent people died. Abigail Williams can be thanked for that. Not only was she fighting an evil within herself, but she also forced people to fight it with her. Her accusations not only impacted Salem, but also the rest of the world. Luckily, these trials came to an end, but what these people endured will never be forgotten. Works Cited Goodheart, Adam. "How Satan Came to Salem." The Atlantic (n.d.): 46-48. Print. Latner, Richard. "The Long and Short of Salem Witchcraft: Chronology and Collective Violence in 1692." Journal of Social History 42.1 (2008): 137-56. JSTOR. Web. 8 Dec. 2015.