The Crucible Fictional Account Of The Salem Witch Trials

The 1996 film The Crucible is a fictional account of the Salem witch trials. While there are many historical inaccuracies in the movie, it does capture some of the themes in scholarship on the period. The film presents the town of Salem in a similar way to how it is depicted in the textbook. The film gets the basic outline of the Salem witch trials right. A group of girls started a panic by accusing an enslaved woman and two other women of bewitching them. During the event more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft and 19 people were hanged, the large majority of them women (Boyer, Salem Witchcraft, 1). The depiction of the girls and women who became â€Å"possessed† and accused others of bewitching them is consistent with the†¦show more content†¦In so doing, it misses an opportunity to explore the complicated ways that gender oppression played into the witch trials. In fact, the movie somehow manages to make an event that was explicitly about the injustice with which women were treated into a story about a noble man who suffers and repents for his sins and ultimately dies a martyr. The Salem Witch Museum website contains a great deal of historical information about the witch trials and elaborates on the information presented in The Crucible. In addition to providing a basic overview of the major events that occurred during the witch trials, the web site features videos called â€Å"Presenting the Evidence† in which tour guides tell the stories of women who were condemned drawn from primary sources. One video called â€Å"Sarah Good’s Mistake† describes the ordinary events and behaviors that were later used against Good in her trial for witchcraft. The narrator points out that Sarah Good balked the social expectations of women in her era. Since her husband could not support their family she often had to beg. One day the pasto r gave something to her daughter and Sarah murmured something under her breather. Later the pastor would testify that she cast some kind of affliction on him. Another factor that was used against Sarah Good at her trial was the fact that she did not attend meetings regularly. Her excuse for not going was that she did not have the proper clothes to wear. She was convicted of witchcraft and hangedShow MoreRelatedSummary : The Crucible Essay964 Words   |  4 PagesOpportunity #4: Attend a performance of â€Å"The Crucible† on one of the following performance dates: Oct 10, 15, 16, or 17 at 7:30pm or the matinee performance on Sunday, Oct 18 at 2pm at the SMSU Fine Arts Theatre Note: The performance on Thurs, Oct 15, is free to all SMSU students with a valid student ID. Admission at all other performances is $10. â€Å"The Crucible† is a fictionalized account of events that occurred during the Salem Witch Trials. Salem is a small Puritan town in MassachusettsRead MoreThe Crucible By Arthur Miller1852 Words   |  8 Pagesof Michigan, was able to transform one of the most notable accounts of mass hysteria and loss of rational thought, and mold it into an elaborate and complex drama. Miller’s, The Crucible tells the story of the Salem witch trials that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in the late seventeenth century. Literary lenses are used to assist readers in admiring and evaluating literary works, in an overabundance of ways. When analyzing The Crucible through the historical, psychological, and archetypal lensesRead MoreCauses of the Salem Witch Craft Trials2052 Words   |  9 Pagesin Salem Village, and there is no evidence from the time that Tituba practiced Caribbean black magic, yet these trials and executions actually still took place, how can you explain why they occu rred? The Salem Witchcraft Trials began not as an act of revenge against an ex-lover, as they did in The Crucible, but as series of seemingly unlinked, complex events, which a paranoid and scared group of people incorrectly linked. And while there were countless other witchcraft trials, Salemîâ€" ¸ trials remainRead MoreFeminist Approach to Witchcraft; Case Study: Millers the Crucible6554 Words   |  27 PagesTitle: Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Millers The Crucible: A Feminist Reading Author(s): Wendy Schissel Publication Details: Modern Drama 37.3 (Fall 1994): p461-473. Source: Drama Criticism. Vol. 31. Detroit: Gale. From Literature Resource Center. Document Type: Critical essay Bookmark: Bookmark this Document Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning Title Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Millers The Crucible: A Feminist Reading [(essay date fall 1994) In the followingRead MoreWilliam Shakespeare And Tolstoy s War And Peace1762 Words   |  8 Pagesevents.’ This strong dismissal from historians most likely came about due to the audiences of fictional literature believing every word as though it were a history book. Rather than turning to the factual guides for knowledge, the public relied on stories that kept them engaged and brought emotion to otherwise dull fact. ‘A number of the early readers of [Robinson] Crusoe read the narrative as a factual account,’ due to the nature of the book being written as though it were a biography. However, what