Salem Witch Trials, Research Paper Example

Salem Witch Trials Application to Hawthorne Young Goodman Brown

The Salem witch trials were a set of hearings prosecuting witches (mainly women) for practicing their art in Massachusetts, which was a colony at the time. This was conducted during February, 1692 and May of 1693. Twenty people were executed from prosecutions of these trials. Importantly, a document from these trials, which can relate to what Hawthorne Young Goodman Brown may have or may not have seen in the woods can be linked to the accusations that witches have the power to cast spells and harm other people, by disguising themselves.

Hawthorne Young Goodman Brown meets an older man in the forest who resembles him. The man is carrying a black serpent shaped staff. They together meet with Goody Cloyse, who takes the staff and flies away from them. This was a feature of the Salem of witches’ trials that caused their executions. Subsequently, it was as if he was surrounded by witches’ tricks and in the midst of a witching ceremony. At this time he seems to lose control of himself and the witches take over and he and his wife are forced into  a life witchcraft without any consent.  Brown lives a miserable life after dying a hopeless soul.

Precisely, these were similar realm life events that led to Salem witches’ trials. These were powerful forces village people could not resist neither free themselves from. In the process it brought much harm to the community. Hawthorne in this story tried to depict  a reality of people leading a life of deprivation from a Puritan perspective. In Young Goodman Brown’s case this life was induced by the witches found in the woods.