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A truth might just be a lie believed by many

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A truth might just be a lie believed by many

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Many sociologists, philosophers and psychologists argue that reality might be a social construct. Indeed, witch trial through history are good examples of the effects society has upon our perspective of reality. Unfortunately, the truth can be manipulated by the majority since people often believe what is considered "normal" and "right". For this I say that the "truth" might be just a lie, a big lie believed by many. The two texts and the movie are illustrations of the consequences of the altered truth. Such alleged truth might blind the consciousness of people and make them lost their humanity and commit horrible crimes justified in the consent of a deceived society.

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The movie “The Crucible,” Cotton Mather’s “The Wonder of the Invisible World,” and Benjamin Franklin’s “A Witch Trial at Mount Holly” depict the events that took place during The Salem Witch Trials. I personally enjoyed watching the movie a lot. Even though some of the aspects are inaccurate due to the fictional component of the story, it certainly reflects how the situations were manipulated and people were accused of witchcraft and hanged when they would not confess. It is clear how the false accusations of the girls created paranoia amongst the people, there was a collective fear towards something they didn't know existed or not. This was reflected in Mather’s book, it is evident how he took the opportunity and used the incidents to support his arguments about witchcraft. He expresses great fear that witches are everywhere, and he believes in their direct connection with the devil; however, his true fear is that the settlers will be overthrown by the witches. Franklin’s article, on the other hand, was truly interesting to read because he tells vivid experiences. He narrates the occurrences, therefore we got the perspective of someone that lived it himself.

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This movie caught my attention from the first minute, and there are some aspects that need to be mentioned. First, even though the puritan girls were raised in this super religious context, they were attracted by the uncanny, by that that was prohibited. They knew that what they were doing was wrong for the other members of society, making them feel more excited about disobeying the rules. Second, the girls were misbehaving, but they wanted to maintain their reputation, that is the reason why they invented all these crazy stories about their neighbors and witchery. They preferred to sentence innocent people to death than to admit that they were wrong. Third, religion obviously played a main role in this issue since it blinded the puritans, and did not let them find the truth. Maybe the witchery cases were real, like the ones narrated in the documents that we had to read, but maybe not; the only thing that we can do now is to learn how to perceive the differences in people and try to give a logical and intelligent explanation to what we do not understand, we need to avoid to make decisions and judge others from fear.

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The Crucible and both stories about witches trials depict the tough reality in which people lived during that time since the church and the state were in charge of controlling the society. Also, the leaders of that time combined moral laws and state laws with the purpose of keeping individuals under certain restrictions. For this reason, in Salem, there was a clear division of belonging to either God or the devil, and this was the same system applied to the witch trials. In addition, I believe many of the cases regarding witchery were developed by group hysteria. The chaos generated for being accused of witchcraft and being hanged did not let people think logically, so people started to confess false events or blame others to avoid any punishment such as Abigail or Tituba did. In general, these events created unexpected consequences that affected the life of innocents.

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"Death and life are in the power of the tongue. . ." 

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"Death and life are in the power of the tongue. . ." 

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"Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits." -Proverbs 18:21 (ESV)
While I was watching the movie "The Crucible" and reading the pdfs, I thought about this Bible verse and how applicable it is in terms of what hapenned at that time. Why? Well, people's accusations were considered as enough evidence to condenm others, send them to jail, and even kill them. In the movie, the girls were the ones that had the power to decide who will live and who won't since the judge, the minister, and almost everyone from the town believed everything that these women said. To be honest, at some point, I thought that the solution in order to not to be murdered was simple. What I mean is that I thought that declaring oneself as guilty of having practised witchcraft (even if it wasn't true) was not a big deal, for it was worse to be hanged. However, at the end of the movie, I comprehended that confessing such thing was a shame for an individual and also negatively affected his or her dignity and name. Moreover, I consider that the decision that people from Salem made at some point of not declaring themselves as guilty for something that they didn't do (despite the risk of being  killed) not only demonstrated their bravery but also helped to stopped these witch trials.

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Were the girls really witches for conjuring to make their beloved love them? They did not think so since as Tituba repeats when is hit "I did not bad". However, fear moves people, they are scared of the invisible and undiscovered. They just want to justify what they can not understand. But it all escaped from their hands, resulting on a paranoia for "witches".
It is unfair the way in which they judged women without any credible evidence, until such point that you could accuse someone you hate of being "devil" just to kill him. Strong feelings and lack of knowledge caused many women to be killed, and nowadays we continue to be guided by ignorance.

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Overall, the movie and the readings were great complementary material. They helped me have a notion of what was going on during that epoch and what the witch trials were like. On one hand, reading about the trial of Martha Carrier and the one at Mount Holly was crazy. I still cannot bring myself to understand how was it so easy to point fingers and claim someone was guilty of witchery without having any real evidence. All that was needed was for a person to claim someone was acting suspicious and that they must be a witch, and immediately other people would backup the claim with "evidence" and more claims. I felt outraged about this because all those people knew they were lying and that their lie could easily bring someone's life to an end. On the other hand, I felt the same way about the movie. For starters, I was curious to see how important religion was for people during that period of time, but it made me sick to think that most of them were so blinded by religion that they would not question anything that was put in front of them "in the name of God." At the beginning of the movie, I thought that the girls were just having some innocent fun, but later on I could not help but to hate them. I was disappointed on the fact that they blamed someone else about their doings, but I was even more disappointed to se that the ones who were supposed to bring justice believed them blindly without really questioning anything. Something that made me laugh was the fact that people would blame the bad things that happened to them on their neighbors, meaning that if something bad happened to them, it must be because some neighbor's witchcraft. I have to admit that I do not love my neighbors, but to claim they're witches when I know what the consequences will be sounds extreme. Although that part of the movie was fun, it made me sad to think that many people died in real life because of those false accusations, even more when the sole "witnesses" were a group of children acting like they were seeing the devil during every trial. Lastly, I want to say that I found very dumb the idea of putting people who admitted to be "guilty" of witchcraft in jail, while hanging people who said they were innocent. People who pledged guilty most definitely did it so that they would not be killed or tortured any longer, while people who pledged innocent did it because they actually were and ended up dying for telling the truth and keeping their dignity.

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In each of these works we can identify the presence of witches and trials, which reveal the history of America during the 16-17th century. In each of the works we can see the existence of Puritans and a social order that is established by the church and the government as one. Since the church played a very important role at that moment, any person who tried to violate their beliefs, such as the witches or people who they suspect could be witches, would be tested or punished for their actions, consequently, several innocent people, and especially women, died. In my perspective the way they test if these people are innocent or not is in a certain way ilogic, but it is part of the beliefs of their era and unfortunately several people were just victims of their punishments and actions. As an interesting fact, I found that Salem means peace and comes from the name Jerusalem where Jesus lived, so it is in a certain way ironic because Salem was not peaceful at all because of their religious conflicts.

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Ignorance, Imposition, and Collective Paranoia

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Ignorance, Imposition, and Collective Paranoia

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As seen throughout this first background, the country was ruled by the vision of good versus evil that the Puritans had. And I think the problem was not whether they had a religious perspective. I believe that the problem is more related to problems of ignorance, imposition, and collective paranoia of the unknown. I say this because, at that time, there was a lot of ignorance both of the biblical interpretation and of what would be the most appropriate way to handle the situation legally. The film and the two readings exemplify how there was no objection from the people to the priests and judges since many people perhaps did not even have a bible to read it, so they blindly believed in any mandate without questioning it, and this is how many innocent people died. Then, taking any opinion or testimony as valid evidence to blame a person seems unfair to me and shows the ignorance and biblical contradictions that existed at that time since they believed that adultery and witchcraft were very serious sins, but they do not apply same principle to kill other people. On the other hand, although I believe that magic and witches exist and that witchcraft can be used for negative purposes, the imposition of religion to rule caused the death of many innocent people since all people began to act with Paranoia because everyone believed, without any objection, that the devil was taking over the town and, whether out of revenge, fear or uncertainty, people began to blame each other. On the other hand, many people knew that the accused were good people, and in the movie, people told Rebeca, for example, that she was a good woman and that God bless her; however, they never raised their voice against the church to stop the deaths.

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I truly believe this is a very interesting moment in human history, but I’m glad it only took place for approximately two years. For this reason, I liked the movie and how it shows the situation that all these people lived in at that moment. Revenge, lies, and uncertainty are topics that are completely linked in “The Crucible” and all started with an act of revenge from Abigail, who wanted to have it all, including John’s love. It was very impressive the people's capability to pretend they saw or listened to something or someone’s soul talking to them. I believe that at that time people were very persuasive and they were not used to question the events that happened, and I think this was “the gun” that hanged many innocent people. I truly believe that there were people that actually hesitated about witchcraft and its existence. However, as we saw in the movie, just a few people were willing to take a step forward and speak, incapable to pretend and lie. In fact, these people’s actions, I believe, were the ones that created that uncertainty about everything they used to believe, but those actions might be the ones that stopped this crazy moment in human history.

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I believe the movie displays how mysticism happened to be remarkably enticing for the American population, especially during the Trial season in Salem. It is of utmost importance to take into account that human beings are tremendously drawn to the unknown, but at the same time they vehemently dread it all the same. In this sense, the barbaric mechanisms by which they condemned a substantial number of people, especially women, were expected within a patriarchal and frenetic society. The movie brings up the subject of mysticism and supernatural influences, especially depicted in the mindset of Abigail, who inexorably conditions herself to believe in the unearthly properties in nature. In a similar fashion, the movie and the articles depict how the trials based their juridical processes upon mysticism, inasmuch as the witches were regarded as allies of the Devil who were willing to go to incredible lengths to haunt and curse their city. The criterion for judging people was based on mysticism, which led to an unyielding and unenlightened exertion of juridical power. Mysticism can be traced back to the events of the New Testament in which people who suffered from epilepsy and Tourette syndrome were branded as being possessed by Satan when in reality they were psychopathologies. Likewise, people, who would not comply with the imperatives of normality were regarded as servants of Satan, which suggests relatable parallelism with biblical times. Ironically, they used the Bible to condemn several people based on the same warped notion of mysticism. It is engaging to see how the witch trial at Mount Holly in the article shows how there was an inextricable link between mysticism and theology when approaching supernatural subjects. The article shows how people were proven guilty of witchery when analyzing their allegedly erratic and pagan activities based on their interpretation of the Bible.  Therefore, the witch trials not only constituted a distorted conception of reality but also an inflexible mechanism of terror and control.

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Paranoia and Injustice vs Truth and Justice

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Paranoia and Injustice vs Truth and Justice

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I found the movie very interesting as it cleared out the idea of Salem Trial, and the information we had read, and seen in class. I think what it was said that the Salem Witch Trial in 1692 and 1693 in Salem, Massachusetts was a synonym of injustice and paranoia is the best way to put it, and the movie actually shows this in many ways. Also, I really like the idea that people till this day do not know if they were actually witches or not as there was no proof. Therefore, the movie shows an act, at the beginning of the movie, that might be seen as witchcraft, which I do believe it exists, but there is no proof that they were witches at all. Nonetheless, they all know, as women, the consequences of being seen doing things like that, and that is why they all panic, but it is not because they reveal their real identity. On one hand, the movie shows how can paranoia affect people, and how this period of time was controlled by this as not only the girls due to their own fears are led to fake the spectral evidence, but also the whole town and even the men in power are led by this paranoia of “bringing God back to Salem.”  On the other hand, this paranoia leads to injustice and selfishness as well. In the movie, Abigail wants John for herself, and that is why she drinks the blood of the bird, but she is the one who starts to fake the visions and threatens the others. She only wants her own benefits even when it is very clear that by doing so, she is hurting John as well. However, the movie also talks about the truth and justice with Hale, John and Elizabeth as they all try to reveal it, but also to stay truth to themselves as John decides that he will not lie, and as it is shown in the movie many people decide not to confess something they weren’t, so they were hanged.

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Paranoia, False Speculations, False Testimonies, and Revenge

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Paranoia, False Speculations, False Testimonies, and Revenge

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The movie “The Crucible,” “The Trial of Martha Carrier,” and “A Witch Trial at Mount Holly” portrays how many women were accused of practicing witchcraft. I think these trials were based on false interpretations of the bible, false testimonies, and revenge. For example, in the movie, we can see that Abigail was accused of being a witch based on Proctor's wife pure revenge because she finds out that her husband is having an affair with Abigail. The same happened in the trial at Mount Holly and Martha Carrier, a woman was accused based on testimonies that could be false speculations leading to false testimonies. Not only because your sheep dance in an uncommon manner or you lost your cows it means it’s because of witchcraft! There must be better explanations than being paranoid and accusing innocent people! These women were tortured and killed, it was unfair for their families and for them to suffer for something that they did not even do.