An Analysis of Salem Possessed

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum’s main purpose behind writing Salem Possessed was to produce a book on the true happenings within the Salem Village and document the trials based on fact, rather than fiction. Boyer and Nissenbaum were inspired to write Salem Possessed after enrolling in a course at the University of Massachusetts, called “New Approaches to the Study of History”, which forced them to team up and explore an event in history by using p

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Unlike most other books, Salem Possessed, is organized in what appears to be a backwards fashion.

One of the main points supporting the belief that the witchcraft accusations were not based on concrete information is the pattern the accusations created geographically. Thus, this narrative proves that by looking at the happenings in Salem by researching trends and patterns of the village leading up to the trials, the reader is able have a better understanding of what caused this outbreak of shocking events to occur. Boyer and Nissenbaum use this information to show that figurative modern day “witch hunts” could end up being detrimental to our current society. I also found no bias of Boyer or Nissenbaum, due to the fact that all of their opinions were based on factual references. Boyer and Nissenbaum not only provide support for all of their opinions, but they also organize the information in such a way that it proves that the accusations had a basis. Also, a trend was noticed in that, the majority of the accused and those accusing them did not even live within the same vicinity. Fourteen of the accused witches lived either within the village or along the border, and after the originally accused fourteen; all other condemnations were against people from all other towns within Essex County, but not Salem Village.

In my opinion, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum successfully accomplished their goal of providing a factual account of the Salem Witch Trials. Although recently the interest in witchcraft has escalated, many authors only focus on the interest of the reader and are willing to distort the actual events that occurred within Salem. In an effort to prevent distortion of the truth, Boyer and Nissenbaum thoroughly researched numerous sources to give the background and reasoning behind the accusations, arrests, and the Witch Trials.

Another impacting factor in the accusations of witchcraft within Salem was its physical setting. This unfortunately resulted in the hangings of nineteen accused witches, due to the resident’s inability to create a practical method of ridding the town of suspicion and abnormal problems. After the prologue, the actual chapters of the book discuss the authors’ reasoning behind the witchcraft accusations of 1692.

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Approximate Word count = 877
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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