The Historical Work Salem Story

The Salem Witch Trials of 1962 was one of the most scandalous historical events in American history. A brief history of the Salem witch trials is that more than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft and about 20 people were executed. In an article it said that “The Salem Witch Trials began in January of 1692, after a group of girls began behaving strangely and a local doctor ruled that they were bewitched. The girls then accused a local slave, Tituba, and two other women of bewitching them.

When Tituba was arrested a few days later, confessed she was a witch and stated there were other witches in Salem, the colonists panicked and began a massive witch hunt to find these other witches.”(Brooks) The salem witch trials occured through the years of 1962 and 1963. Some more background on the Salem Witch Trials was that “A “witchcraft craze” rippled through Europe from the 1300s to the end of the 1600s. Tens of thousands of supposed witches”mostly women”were executed.

Though the Salem trials came on just as the European craze was winding down, local circumstances explain their onset.” (Blumberg) Many Christians thought that people who practice witchcraft were people that had received powers from the devil to harm others in return for their loyalty. Some of the people who were accused of practicing witchcraft were hung but some failed to plead guilty and was pressed to death, and some died in prison. While reading Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 the overall meaning of this text is to explain what happened during the salem witch trials because few topics in American culture have received the brought attention received by the Salem witch trials. The subject of scholarly tomes, films, TV shows, folklore and newspaper cartoons and the vehicle for countless metaphors of oppression and persecution Salem has had a powerful hold on American imagination. The major point of the novel is to peace today important events and facts into one narrative explaining the Salem Witch Trials.

There is not really any problems, puzzlement, or mysteries in the historical work Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. The book does not focus on one single aspect, character, or event. He tells the story of Salem in 1692 as a narrative, piecing together information from different documents, while commenting on others ideas and assessments. By doing this the people reading it sees that there is much more to the different stories within the trials, and chips away at the mythology that has messes up the subject since it happened. Instead of having a thesis in the book he writes the book as he sees the events fold out through the different documents, and makes the book seem more like an account of what happened from researching and finding different sources in 1692 instead of retelling it under a new light.

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