Salem Witch Trials essay question.

Hi,

I need to write an essay as part of my History course. The essay can be on any topic of my choosing, and I have decided that I want to write an essay regarding the Salem Witch Trials. The assignment is for the course of 1 year, and therefore the essay needs to be highly skilled, well researched, and the essay question (which we choose ourselves) needs to be a challenging question.

So basically, what do you think are some good ideas for challenging issues regarding the Salem Witch Trials?

Some ideas I already have are:
- The economical motives behind the trial, as oppossed to the religious motives
- The issue of race in determining the "witches"
- The issue of gender - women being accused of being "witches"

- The economical motives behind the trial, as oppossed to the religious motives---

I think this first one is the topic you can write the best essay on, as there is so much to say about it! I am not an expert, but the Catholic church made so much money and gained so much land during this travesty, as well as the millions they made financing Hitler. To me, the true devil was the Catholic church. If you have not read The Crucible, you could start there, to get fired up for the assignment. (Or you could rent the movie.) Also, see if you can find the book called, the Malleus Malleficarum. I doubt that I spelled it right, but it was a guide book for how to tell if someone was a witch, including tools for torture, and what to do if you believed someone was a witch, but could not prove it, for example, there was a little device that looked like a pen, but there was a retractable small dagger inside, that you could put gently against someones stomach, in front of others while looking innocent, and suddenly they would jerk and cry out, and bleed 'spontaneously', thereby obviously a witch. grrrr

good luck with your essay, very interesting topic!

:)

Well this is going to sound crazy but it had to do with a poor wheat crop the true reason for it happened had to do with the wheat being bad there was a strain of acid or something in it cause the girls to hallucinate. It sounds crazy but i learned it in forensics I'm pretty sure its true might want to do some googling before you include that point however.