Analysis of Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 by Richard Goldbeer - Book Report/Review Example

Witchcraft and the things that surround witchcraft trials throughout history have long been a of fascination to the American public. The stories of the Salem witchcraft trials have been told and retold in many different formats, from classrooms all the way to the stage, where Arthur Miller’s retelling in The Crucible is probably the best known. This process of retelling, however, means that very few people know the details of what really happened in the Salem witchcraft trial or in any of the other trials that occurred in America around that time period: the established narrative in American mythology is too strong. The prominence of Salem also overshadows other witchcraft trials, either giving the impression that every trial mirrored Salem exactly or that it was the only witchcraft trial of the period. Author Richard Goldbeer is trying to deconstruct these trends in his book Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692. In this book Goldbeer describes and analyzes the events surrounding the lesser known witch hunt of 1692 Stamford, Connecticut. He presents a very interesting read in which he strikes a fine balance between accurate and reliable history and telling the story of what happened in Stamford in and, possibly more importantly, entertaining way. This review will begin by briefly describing the contents of the book, then will move on to the successes and failures of the work. This work succeeds in balancing academic concerns with concerns over readability, and does a good job playing off of the myth of Salem to demonstrate how witchcraft trials actually occurred in the vast majority of cases, while connecting the lessons learned from witchcraft trials in the seventeenth century to instances occurring today and demonstrating why it is important to understand what truly happened. The only major failing of this work is a side effect of its success: to preserve readability and narrative structure, Goldbeer does not clearly demonstrate where he got which sources, which makes it hard to analyze the where he gets the information for his narrative excerpts. Escaping Salem is divided into eight different segments: the first, the prologue, gives a small narrative to provide context and give interest to the story and begin to tell the story of why we should care about this particular witchcraft trial compared to the much more publicized one in Salem. It then moves on through the story in a logical and roughly chronological manner, moving to “Katherine Branch’s Fits,” the fits that began the trials, the examination of the causes of her suffering in the section “Who is it that torments her?” before pausing to outline the incredibly detailed legal proceedings that were involved in determining the guilt or innocence of the accused, the different kinds of evidence that can be used and so on (Goldbeer, 16, 33, 51. This section is probably one of the most interesting in the entire book – witchcraft trials are so often portrayed as being filled with hellfire and brimstone preachers, publics willing to believe anything, and judges willing to hide sordid secrets, Goldbeer’s description of the highly elaborate systems involved is truly fascinating (57). There was a very clear legal delineation between the kinds of evidence that could or could not be used to accuse someone of being a witch, and overall the tenor of the discussion held were much more reasonable than one would think (59). Furthermore, it is incredibly interesting to see that overall the judges and public tended to be much more critical in examining evidence of witchcraft than is usually described, and in fact tended to disbelieve accusations of witchcraft rather than lend them credence. The book then goes on to describe the debates held about this particular case, the incredibly emotional debates that followed, and the uneasy truce that follows any witchcraft trial regardless of the outcome. Finally, it closes with a long afterwards that talks about the forces that come to bear on any witchcraft trials in either the modern times or in historic times, and what they say about the societies that have them. Now that the general outline of this book has been discussed, it is important to move on to the things that it succeeded at and the ways in which it failed. This book certainly succeeds in many more ways than it fails, and its failures are, in many ways, nearly impossible to avoid side effects of the positive aspects. By far the greatest success of this work is its readability. So often history written recently is dry, complicated and nearly impossible to read – Goldbeer’s work bucks this trend in several ways, which makes it incredibly readable and accessible to students of a wide variety of age levels. By far the most important of these is the simple and well written narrative framework that pervades the book. It opens like any story does, by setting the scene, and sounds almost like an historical fiction: “It was early evening in June 1692, and dusk was falling over Stamford” (1). It uses highly evocative language as well, with examples from the prologue perhaps being the best ones: “a piercing, blood-chilling scream” initiating the trials, or describing the “horrifying contortions” that people went through when experiencing supposed possession by witches (5). The language used is also relatively simple, which keeps the book accessible and allows it to pass the “McDonalds Test” – if you walked into a McDonalds and handed it to the first person you meet to read, they would probably read and understand everything quite well. Finally, it keeps interest through occasional comparisons to the much better known Salem Trials throughout the prologue, chapters in the middle of the work and especially in the afterwards (153). Finally, this book always makes it clear how the world appeared to the people living in their time, how without scientific explanations for things witchcraft did not seem so strange, and how the mystical was always an essential part of everyday life (10). This work succeeds extremely well because of how highly readable it is, which makes it accessible to a large audience and many age groups, and in its ability to let the reader see through the eyes of those who were actually experiencing the events. More impressively, this accessibility does not come at the cost of accuracy or of depth of analysis, which are both done extremely well. Another of the successes of this book is that it deconstructs the myth of how witchcraft trials actually progressed. This book does not assume its reader comes from an objective point of view, but rather understands that the reader is coming from a culture that is pervaded with mythology surrounding witchcraft trials, and witchcraft trials of Salem most especially. It does this by making constant reference to the Salem trials, from the title (which interestingly mentions Salem but not the town in Connecticut that the book actually talks about) through to the end of the book. It constantly compares the trials happening in Stamford to the ones that had occurred in Salem, for instance, mentioning that “over fifty individuals” were found guilty in Salem (104), and contrasting the “chaos” that had occurred in Salem with the more orderly process that occurred in other witchcraft trials (112). This book does an excellent job in drawing contrasts between the Salem trials and the ones in Stamford, thus allowing the reader to use and connect to their previous knowledge and deconstructing the mythology that surrounds the witchcraft trials in Salem to this day. The only major complaint with this book is a consequence of its readability: sometimes the sources of information Goldbeer draws on are hard to identify. While he makes explicit references to court testimony fairly frequently, when he gives a more narrative style account it is hard to see what elements are conjecture and what are more grounded in fact – essentially it blurs the line between the writing of history and the writing of historical fiction. The book is so accurate, however, and written so well, it is hard to dwell on this small error. Goldbeer’s Escape from Salem is an excellent book and should be read by anyone with any interest in witchcraft trials in general or in the Salem trials in particular. It especially succeeds in how well written it is, how accessible it is, and what an excellent job it does conveying the world of seventeenth century America to the reader, while it fails somewhat in creating a clear delineation between elements of conjecture and elements that are more certainly factual. It is incredibly interesting to learn the truth about how witchcraft trials usually actually progressed, and how the case of Salem was an aberration, not a pattern. Works Cited Goldbeer, Richard. Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692. New York: Oxford UP 2004. Read More