LITR 4231 Early American Literature Research Posts 2014 (research post assignment) Research Post 1

Sarah Robin Roelse

March 24, 2014

What Have We Learned From The Salem Witch Trials?

            When looking that the Salem Witch trials and seeing the mass hysteria breakout there, we can compare it to a couple of instances which have since then happened:  The Holocaust against the Jewish people during World War II and even sex scandals against daycare centers during the eighties which included accusations involving Devil worship. By covering and learning more about these social situations, the one factor that I want to figure out which is most important, is what they all have in common; while I know that there may be many similarities between the situations, I want to know why these particular groups of people had fingers pointed at and were, in some instances, killed for accusations that held no significant merit.

            From what we have learned in class and through independent study, I’ve learned that, while higher socially in class, the accusing girls, Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam were rather unpopular in the community and wanted to be seen as the “in crowd” or popular girls; this is one of the reasons that they started accusing slaves, elderly, and impoverished people of witchcraft and devil worship—they were seeking attention and thought this would be their way to fame (Causes for the Outbreak).  When looking at these matters, we can see that this comes to a point of power play and boredom; the girls deicide to play a game with this whole situation, and it catches on a lot farther than they think it will and eventually pits classes of people throughout the whole town against each other for multitudes of petty reasons which weren’t even tangible to be proven in the court system.  This type of power play comes to a basic point:  The higher standing people in the town were scapegoating the less significant folks in the area for varying reasons:  Property matters, tax laws, or even congregational disputes—and they were winning (Causes for the Outbreak).  Unfortunately, this act of scapegoating the less powerful in town eventually lead to the deaths of twenty people and ruined the lives of many others through means of slander (Blumberg).

            While the scale of the Salem Witch Trials by no means compares to that of the Holocaust, the general story surrounding the victims is similar. With the idea of scapegoating in mind, we can continue onto The Holocaust of half of the European Jewish community during World War II. Comparing The Holocaust to the Salem Witch Trials by means of a scapegoating method is ideal; Hitler and the Third Reich convinced Germany that the reason for their losing World War I and being in such a deep depression was because of the Jewish population.  The type of power that Hitler wanted to ascend to could, in his mind, only be reached with the extermination of the entire Jewish population, and to do so, he had to accomplish turning the world against them—which he made a good attempt at doing so, he just fortunately failed.  By using the Jewish population as a source of blame for the situation, Hitler was able to take control of most of Europe and succeeded in wiping out over six million Jews.  The point that I am making is that in neither Germany nor in Salem did individuals take into account their own responsibility towards their actions—in Salem, property matters should have been executed better if they were unsatisfactory to either party involved; in Germany, if the depression had reached such unbearable lows, then they should have rethought their options.  There was no legitimate way to prove that these classes of people were to blame and that their deaths would be the solution to the area’s problems.

            The instance of the McMartin Daycare Scandal (1983-1990) also compares to the Salem Witch Trials on the fact that there was no real proof for the allegations being thrown against the accused—it was merely a scapegoat situation for a mother to gain attention with regards to her son.  The accused, Ray and Peggy Buckey, were teachers at an award winning daycare which had served over two hundred families through the years; the woman who single-handedly started the allegations towards them was a paranoid and alcoholic mother of a three year-old boy, Judy Johnson, accusing the aforementioned of sexual abuse against her child (and other children) and Devil worship (Linder).  As the accusations grew around the town, they also became more outrageous and ostentatious—including tales of flying people, dead animals, and ritualistic sexual and Satanic acts including children and rotted corpses.   When the accused were finally taken into custody they were held in prison, much like the accused “witches” of the seventeenth century in Salem, they were met with less than favorable circumstances (Blumberg).  As “witches” several of them met their deaths before going to trial in their town; but for the Buckeys, treatment was much worse, as apprehended “child abusers” they were considered the lowest of the low in prison and received the worst handling from people, inmates and guards alike (Ramsland).  The situations are so very similar in the fact that they disrupted the lives of so many people without having even the slightest shred of evidence against anyone involved—the accusing people had no reason for making these false statements against other people; each situation ultimately ended with most of the accused “witches” of Salem and both of the Buckeys being acquitted and pardoned from their charges with no further charges pressed against them(Blumberg, Linder). 

            With these three situations throughout our social history being so different, they also have such similarities:  The outsider, underdog, or social outcast is the one who is being scapegoated and blamed—without any sort of proof to hold against them to provide reason for continuing the belief of the allegations called upon them.  Honestly, I do think the only reason for these events to take place on three separate occasions were for people who were in search of power, trying to find and take it.  The “witches” of Salem had no conjuring powers or connection to Satan; the Jewish community was not the reason for Germany’s economic distress; and the McMartin Daycare was not a center for child abuse or devil worship, it just so happens that these were the chosen people as a quick and easy way for a small handful of people to climb a ladder of power in order to advance themselves.  While the scales of these situations differ in size, they each have their importance on our society; it should teach us not to point fingers at people before we hop onto a bandwagon of accusations, but rather to listen and think before we make our decisions about people and to truly devote time to a pressing question as to the matter of one’s life (or death)—but has it?