As we prepare to read The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, we discovered that it largely relates to the Salem witch trials. After the second World War ended, paranoia revolving around communism flooded the country. Everyone in America was on the lookout for potential communists. Hundreds if not thousands of people’s lives were ruined by false accusations which sometimes led to imprisonment. This campaign against communism was called McCarthyism, named after former Senator, Joseph McCarthy, who made many of the accusations. McCarthy released lists of people working in the government who he suspected were communists. The reason behind these often false accusations could simply be because someone owned modern art or was against the use of nuclear weapons.
The concept of witch hunts began years before the Salem witch trials in European countries such as Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy. The craze began around 1300-1330 and peaked in the 1580s-1630s, but it only started to reach America later in the 1640s. An estimated total of 40,000-60,000 people were executed all over Europe after being found guilty or witchcraft. In Salem in January 1962, one of the local reverend’s daughters, Elizabeth Parris, and his niece Abigail Williams started having fits, screaming, and crying. When questioned, they named Tituba, the family’s slave, Sarah Good, a homeless woman, and Sarah Osbourne, an old, poor woman. Both Good and Osbourne denied any wrongdoing, but Tituba confessed to being visited by the Devil, who wanted her to curse the children. All of them were put in jail. Scientists now hypothesize that the girls’ behavior could have been a combination of different diseases like Lyme, asthma, epilepsy, encephalitis, or even child abuse. Some have even speculated that the young girls consumed the fungus ergot which causes vomiting, choking, fits, and hallucinations. Ergot is used today to produce the hallucinogen, LSD. The first woman to officially be convicted was Bridget Bishop, who was also the first person to be tried by the new Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide), which was set up especially for this purpose. She claimed her innocence, but she was hanged on June 10, 1692. Over the next 3 months, 18 more people were hanged, one man was pressed to death, and 5 died in jail. Over 200 people had been accused of witchcraft, including Sarah Good’s 4 year old daughter Dorothy (she was sent to jail but then released). Witches were blamed for daily inconveniences like losing cattle along with more serious things such as sickness or the loss of a child. Women were accused more often than men because they were thought to be weaker and more susceptible to the Devil’s influence.
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In chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby, Nick briefly mentions the presence of one of Gilda Gray’s understudy from the Follies at Gatsby’s party. This sparked both of our interests and we decided to take a closer look at the life of Gilda Gray. Gray was born in Poland in 1895 with the name Marianna Michalska and was taken in by an orphanage after her parents' untimely death. Years later in 1909, she and her foster parents moved to America. Her famous dance move, the shimmy, was created as she shook with nervousness during a performance at a local saloon. She made her big break when she starred in the Ziegfeld Follies in 1922. One of Gray’s ultimate goals was to become a movie star and in 1923, her dreams came true when she got a part in Lawful Larceny. She starred in other movies like, Aloma of the South Seas (1926), The Devil Dancer (1927), Piccadilly (1929), and lastly, Rose-Marie (1936), all of which displayed her skilled dancing abilities. Gray had three different marriages that all ended in divorce. The stock market crash of 1929 hit Gray’s finances hard and in 1941 she filed for bankruptcy, and meanwhile, her health was declining as she had a heart attack in 1931 when she was only 36. At 64 years old she suffered from another heart attack and died in Los Angeles, CA. Today Gilda Gray has a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame.
We were both interested in the topic of prohibition because we are about to start reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, which takes place when the ban of alcohol was active. On January 16th, 1919, the 18th amendment banned the manufacturing, transportation, importation, and sale of any alcoholic beverage. Why was this done? To put it simply, people saw alcohol as destructive and unholy. Many women supported the "temperance" movement because they saw alcohol as the cause of failed marriages and ruined families. Another group of people who were supportive of the temperance movement were business owners. As they saw it, the banning of alcohol would reduce the number of accidents in factories and increase overall productivity. However, the illegality of alcohol didn't stop people from buying and selling it. People turned to "bootlegging", making and selling alcohol illegally. They did this by opening speakeasies or secret bars. In order to hide alcohol from the authorities, people concealed it in fake books, lamps and even canes. Moonshiners, people who sold and made alcohol illegally, would wear cow print shoes in order to fool government officials. In one case, a moonshiner hid cases of alcohol in what looked like wooden beams. Finally, in 1933, the 21st amendment was ratified. This negated the 18th amendment and alcohol became legal once more.
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