Why tituba confess

Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne refused to confess to practicing witchcraft, although Sarah Good did say she thought Sarah Osborne might be a witch. But everything changed when the magistrates started questioning Tituba.

She told them that the devil had come to her and asked her to join him. Tituba told them that she had seen Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good use magic to hurt the girls. She revealed that they had been helped by two other women and a man from Boston whom Tituba did not recognize. She told them that Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne had demons in the form of animal companions who helped them commit their crimes. And she ended by confessing that they had bullied her into becoming a witch and hurting the girls.

While Tituba spoke, her accusers stopped screaming. The magistrates believed this was evidence that Tituba was telling the truth. When she finished, the girls started screaming, and Tituba told the magistrates that she could see the spirit of Sarah Good hurting them.

Then, Tituba herself was struck blind and mute. The interview ended in chaos. The next day the magistrates interviewed Tituba in her jail cell, where she revealed even more details. She revealed that the book had nine signatures total, implying there were more witches around. She explained that she had flown on sticks with her fellow witches. They did not know that Samuel had beaten Tituba until she created this story. Instead of wondering whether people were imagining things, the magistrates accepted this as proof that everything Tituba said was true.

Many years later, Tituba revealed that Samuel beat her for weeks until she confessed to being a witch. As a confessed witch, Tituba was no longer considered an immediate threat to the community. In fact, no person who confessed to practicing witchcraft was executed during the trials. On May 12, Tituba was sent to a prison in Boston to make room for all the new suspects who were being arrested in Salem Village.

In total, people were accused of practicing witchcraft. Fifty-four confessed, and their testimony was used in the trials of other suspects. When she was needed to testify at a trial, Tituba was brought back to Salem.

She probably testified at the trials of a number of people who were convicted and executed for witchcraft, but it is difficult to know for sure, because the official trial records were lost. Twenty people were convicted of witchcraft and executed.

Three died in prison before they could be tried. Tituba spent an entire year in jail, because no one would pay her bail. When she was brought to trial on May 9, , the charges against her were immediately dismissed. By the time she was brought to trial, people were starting to think the whole panic was a big mistake.

Samuel Parris refused to pay the fees necessary to free Tituba from prison, so she was sold to another English settler who agreed to cover them. According to History. This event may have caused the trials to begin. With the mix of the belief of the underworld and witches, the rumors began and spread like wildfire. To begin with, Abigail had control over the rest of the girls who were also caught dancing in the woods.

The girls, after the incident in the woods, lied along with Abigail. Whatever lie Abigail came up with, the girls would support it. Even in court, Abigail had the support of the girls when she claim to have seen a yellow bird. This made her story even more believable that even Judge Danforth fell for it.

To begin, it is a popular belief that Tituba, a slave in the story, was justified in her confession to witchcraft in order to save her own life. Tituba instantly confesses, and saves herself from a terrible death. In this situation, it is believed that few would uphold their truth, and rightfully so, for their life is on the line. Although this may be true, by confessing, Tituba unknowingly starts a whirlwind.

Show More. The Role Of Tituba In The Crucible Words 2 Pages One could easily say Abigail was the one to blame for the hysteria in Salem during the witchcraft trials, but there is someone who was as much to blame as her. Read More. Feminism In The Crucible Words 4 Pages It all starts at the very beginning when they start lying about Tituba being a witch and conjuring Ruth Putnams dead sisters. Hypocrisy In The Scarlet Letter Words 5 Pages In the Scarlet letter, the influence and characteristics of Pearl, Hester Prynne daughter is used to convey the theme of sin and hypocrisy in the novel.

Abigail's Inhumane In The Crucible ' Words 1 Pages Abigail uses the fact that every person shes accused has been a witch to secure her position as a trust worth witness in court.

Related Topics. The little glimpse of her life that is available is provided only by the court transcripts themselves. Though Tituba's words may resonate to us through the court records, she cannot tell her version of the events leading up to the Trials, she cannot share her own history and memory of Salem and life before it. In addition to Tituba's own recorded words, we can obtain some information based on what her contemporaries said of her. Beyond these strict limitations however, we can realistically draw no further conclusions as to her racial identity, affinity for witchcraft and stories of the occult, nor motivations for confessing to the accusations.

What we do know is from the historical documents is that Tituba was in fact a slave in the Parris home at the time of Betty and Abigail's initial sufferings. Tradition holds that she was married to another slave, John Indian, and the couple was purchased by Reverend Parris during time he spent in Barbados. Tradition, however, does not a history make.

Tituba and John Indian did reside with the Parrises; Samuel Parris had a plantation in Barbados, and he owned two slaves after he returned to Boston, and she could have come from Barbados.

However, the story that Tituba struck the "fatal spark" and ignited simmering tensions in Salem Village by enthralling the local teenage girls with her stories of African or Caribbean voodoo and magic spells must be recognized for what it is --a story. It was not her "voodoo spells and stories" which, in fact, caused the girls' initial hysterics but their practice of forbidden fortune telling.

Nowhere in the court records or contemporary accounts is Tituba said to have taught the practice of fortune telling to the girls in Rev Parris' house. The fortune telling technique that the girls' used, as reported by one of them to the Rev.