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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 5 page research paper offers a summary and analysis of the material included in Carla G. Pestana's "The Salem Witchcraft Scare," which is a chapter from Retrieving the American Past. The writer describes the chapter and argues that this is an excellent piece of scholarship that offers considerable insight. No other sources cited.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KL9_khwitsalgg.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
Carla G. Pestana addresses the period in "The Salem Witchcraft Scare," which offers a comprehensive overview of scholarship that describes what historians indicate about who was accused and why, as
well as views that were contemporary to 1692 that pertain to witches and how the events that occurred in Salem were perceived. It is probably accurate to state that
everyone has heard of the Salem Witch Trials, but, as Pestana indicates in her introduction, they believe that "the religious bigotry of the Puritans can explain anything in their history"
(Pestana 38). In other words, as Puritans are associated with religious zealotry, this is viewed as the principal cause of the hysteria. However, Pestana also indicates that the tide of
public opinion supporting the witch hunt was turned largely due to the efforts of Puritan ministers, who were "led by the influential Increase Mather" (Pestana 37). As this suggests, this
chapter, along with historical facts that presents, offers considerable insight into the period and why the atrocious injustice of the Salem Witch Trials occurred. The first section in the
chapter after the introduction addresses the question of "What motivated the accusations?" that is, the original accusations of the young women that their fits were due to witchcraft (Pestana 39).
Investigating this question, Pestana offers excerpts from the works of four historians who have contrasting opinions. These four historians offer explanations that focus on different aspects of Salem society and
the people involved. Peter Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum focus on economic and political causes; Carol Karlsen, gender tensions; John Demos, character traits; and Christine Heyrman, religious tensions. Each of
these excerpts demonstrates some aspects of the social and political tensions that contributed to the behavior of the supposedly tormented witchcraft victims. Boyer and Nissenbaum relate the location of the
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