Preview

Three Sovereigns for Sarah

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
256 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Three Sovereigns for Sarah
Winston Churchill's quote, "The best things carried to excess are wrong" is a statement that most people do not take serious. The statement has reoccurred throughout history many times. Three Sovereigns for Sarah documented the events that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. During that time the Puritans were trying to purify their town of witches. However they carried this to excess by accusing innocent people, pointless tests, and mistreatment towards convicted peoples.

The so called witches of Salem were accused on faulty evidence and treated harshly. A person could be accused of witchcraft based solely on spectral evidence. A person could say that someone else's spirit was hurting them and they would use this as enough evidence to prosecute and convict someone of witchcraft. The people of Salem had several tests for witches, and if an accused passed a test they would give another and another until they failed. The people who were accused of witchcraft would be sent to a jailhouse with little food and water. They would put shackles on them so that these so called spectra's could not harm anyone. Not only was this taken to excess it was unmorally wrong.

Three sovereigns for Sarah is a good example of Churchill's quote, "The best things are carried to excess." 20 people died cause of this, 19 hanged and 1 pressed to death. The people affected were women as well as men. The fact of what happened in Salem, demonstrates that this will probably occur many times in the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    All of the people then back in the late 1700’s all the talk was the British were going to come and hang them all. In the book The Secret of Sarah Revere every where she goes is all talk about who was Tory’s or who was Patriots. That talk creates a conflict in Sarah’s family. Her stepmother Rachel is friends with a Tory and Sarah’s grandmother sees that as betrayal. “A Tory friend, open your eyes Sarah, look around you.”(Rinaldi) This shows the frustration between Sarah and her sister with the subject of Rachel. On this part of the book is where the tension is rising.…

    • 106 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    When people think about The Salem Witch Trial, the first thing that comes to mind is “oh it 's just a bunch of wannabe witches being killed.” But in reality they were innocent people being accused by a bunch of little girls trying to get got of trouble. People were very suspicious and paranoid about everything back then-if a few people in the village suddenly became ill, it was because of a "witch". Remember, they had no science to explain anything, so they had to make up stuff that seems ridiculous to us today. They feared what they didn 't know and understand, therefore seeking any kind of solution . . . in this case their fear led to The Salem witch…

    • 1070 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Salem Witch Trials "When the lines between reality and delusion become so blurred, you can no longer know what's real and what is not. " This is a quote by A.B. Shepherd. This can be a direct example of those women accused of being witches in the Salem witch trials. For these women, most of their lives during the year of the trials could have felt a little like this.…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Salem Witch Trials are known as a series of people being accused and prosecuted of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts beginning in February 1692 until May 1693. The trials began after a group of girls claimed that they were possessed by the devil. Several local women were accused of witchcraft and this began the wave of hysteria that would forever haunt Salem and leave a painful legacy for a long time to come. Nearly every major school of historians has attempted to explain the answer to the mystery of the trials, trying to understand why they occurred. From Marxists who blame class conflict, to Freudians who believe in mass hysteria, the more ecologically based historians who put the blame on hallucinogenic ergot fungus, and now more…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18), this was a passage that the Puritans lived by. The Salem Witch Trials took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692 and claimed the lives of many innocent people. It led to the hangings of almost twenty, leaving more than one hundred in prison. A group of young girls in Salem Village accused several local women of witchcraft while being claimed of being possessed by the devil. This is causing a wave of hysteria to spread throughout colonial Massachusetts.…

    • 361 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Once interrogated for an explanation behind their state, the girls began to accuse the residents of Salem. What caused the villagers to believed the girls’ claims, remains a topic of great debate, however, it is imperative to evaluate the context in which this all unfolded. The belief and condemnation of witches traces back as far as the Old Testament. Likewise, Salem was a community that was dominated by strong religious beliefs, as Ernest King and Franklin Mixon, in what is now known to be one of the most prominent investigations of the Salem witch trials, claim that “The Puritans, and [their] religious doctrine, dominated the area and . . . had a strong presence in daily life”. Taking this into account, it becomes understandable how easy it was for the villagers to reach the conclusion that the afflicted girls had caught the evil hand.…

    • 498 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The author, Arthur Miller, of a timeless classic play The Crucible tells us the story of a small town not too far from Salem where a young girl by the name of Abigail Williams brings witchcraft claims on the most highly respected and innocent people in the town. Eventually others close to Abigail and other envious locals in the town begin to accuse nearly half the town of witchcraft for personal gain. The harsh, yet true reality of human behavior when faced with jealousy and greed is displayed throughout this play to show the evilness of humans true hearts.…

    • 579 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I. A. The Salem Witch Trials were a time of panic for poorly, ugly women and their families (A Brief…

    • 266 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In January 1692, the colony of Salem, Massachusetts would encounter a situation that would change the small colony forever. That year the quiet town would endure a 9-month long span of trials of witchcraft that would leave 200 accused witches and 20 dead. The trials were based on religious beliefs and would separate all the “unholy” citizens from the community. The trials separated the community based on fear and individuals singling out others based on class. The witch-hunts have affected modern society by deeming women as weak and inferior to men and as easily controlled. The whole thing could have even simply started as a group of young girls who just wanted to gain attention and then taken over by corrupt leaders who wanted to exercise…

    • 774 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The salem witch trials took place in 1692, back then people believed almost everything they were told. When a well known reverend discovered his daughter, niece, slave, and a couple of girls from town dancing and singing in the woods, his first instinct was to rush over and confront the girls. When he got there the girls faked fainting to try and avoid getting in trouble, by doing so they made the reverend thing witchcraft was among them. He eminently falsely accused his salve for the girls odd behavior, he also summoned reverend Hale who was an “expert” in the field of witchcraft. By doing this reverend parris sealed many of the villagers fait with know, but only time would tell.…

    • 530 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Salem Witch Trials was a historic event that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in the year 1692 and lasted until 1693. It’s known to be a dark time in American History (Brooks, Historyof Massachusetts.org). It first began when a group of teenage girls were exposed of practicing witchcraft and it then lead to bigger things Innocent people were killed and others were treated poorly. More than 200 individuals were wrongfully blamed and 20 were executed for denying the accusations (Blumberg, Smithsonianmag.com ). To this day no one is sure as to why the trials even started. There are numerous theories that state the causes of the infamous witch hunt but only a few of them are quite convincing. Many historians believe that religion is the main…

    • 839 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Salem Witch Trials Dbq

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In 1692, Salem, Massachusetts broke out into hysteria all because of an accusation about a witch. When a few teenage girls began accusing the older woman of Salem of witchcraft, suspicions started flying around. Soon neighbors were accusing each other, calling the Puritan church to get involved. After the church got involved many innocents lost their lives. Most of the teenage girls that accused the women of witchcraft, wanted their husbands for land and money. Not that the women did anything to the girls, they were just segregated on opposite sides of town. This made the wives an easy target for the girl’s allegations. Salem Village had self-segregated based on wealth and power and contributed to one of the many reasons the Witch Trials of 1692 came to be.…

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    After watching the Three Sovereigns for Sarah, there were many thoughts that went through my head. The main idea of the movie was the fact that there was something so called “witchcraft.” Many factors played into the accusing of people who were “witches,” like, superstition, politics, gender, religion etc. As a basic summary of the movie, mostly there were some girls who thought they were possessed by witches. When some of the townsmen asked who possessed them, they stated some names, and just kept saying that all these people were witches.…

    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Arthur Miller’s tale of Witch hunts conducted in Salem during the 16th century in “The Crucible” he uses it as an allegory to show that sometimes the people who suffer the most during conflict actually are the most innocent. The story relates to a 1950’s America as Senator Joseph McCarthy would Blacklist innocent people for being “communists” due to little to no evidence and the person having a few opposing traits to him like being Liberal, Chinese, or speaking out against him. The public were okay with this of course, seeing how there was that much fear being spread and rumours of Russian communists taking over the country forced people to do whatever they could to save their “freedom”-even if they had spoken out against McCarthy for what he was doing, they probably would have been blacklisted themselves. This suffering relates back to the innocent people in Salem who refused to confess that they were Witches and were therefore jailed and some executed. The people who remained as not charged of being a witch still refused to speak out as they would be charged and persecuted also. More than one person suffered when it came to these conflicts, and it is sad to see how regardless that these two events in history were close to 400 years apart- human kind hadn’t changed, but instead repeated itself.…

    • 754 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Arthur Miller's “The Crucible” the last words uttered by the people at the end of the Salem witch trial were ones with no regret as they hung to death in front of the town. All of these people who were in fact innocent all faced similar problems due to the Puritan religion and government being, in essence, one in the same. Jealousy, revenge, and fear of the unknown sets the stage for how one persons should act vs how the people did act in the religious society.…

    • 594 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays