In The Presence Of The Devil Research Paper

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Miranda Arnett L Pierce English 1301.41804 24 September 2015 In the Presence of the Devil I nearly died today, and the irony rests in the fact that no matter how many of these sick peoples lives I have saved, they will always consider me their enemy. My name is Tituba, and I was born in an Arawak Village in South America, where I was apprehended and taken to Barbados as a slave. Samuel Parris later bought me in Barbados when I was a teenager and brought me to Boston in 1680. After he was decreed the new minister, we moved in November of 1689 to Salem Village. But Salem Village later faced a hysteria, and I was one of the first women to be accused of the crime. When I arrived in Salem, I immediately missed my homeland. Unlike Arawak Village…show more content…
and other Salem girls began acting in the same way. Doctor Griggs, who handled the “afflicted” girls, suggested that the cause for such behavior may be witchcraft. Puritans believed that to become bewitched a witch must draw an individual under a spell. Also, during this time period, people feared that the Devil was constantly trying to find ways to invade and demolish Christians and their communities. The girls were soon questioned and forced to name their tormentors. The girls named their tormentors: Sarah Good, a poor woman; Sarah Osborn, an elderly woman; and myself, a slave. Osborn, Good, and myself were brought before John Hawthorne and Jonathan Corwin and we were questioned. Osborn and Good dubbed innocence, but I confessed. Therefore, my detailed confession prompted a witch-hunting rampage. I was already under suspicion because a neighbor, Mary Sibley, told me to bake a rye cake with the urine of Betty Parris that was cooked and fed to a dog, believing that the dog would end up revealing the identity of Betty’s afflictor. Parris was livid when he found out about the cake, and then subsequently the girls named me. I figured that confessing to the witchcraft and owning up to “what I did” they would not kill me. I was right, but the others did not think the same way as

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