“The Salem Witchcraft Trials”

“The Salem Witchcraft Trials”

This project consists in formulating a research question in order to improve
the knowledge of the theme in an specific aspect. After doing some research in webpages and according to the Arthur’s Miller film “The Crucible”, I finally developed a research question: What was the role of Tituba during the Trials? Tituba is Parris’ slave, and her role is reallymysterious, and that’s why I selected this question, and I’ll try to answer it in this essay.


Tituba was an uncommon person in Salem, a woman with so different
characteristics is not rareto be accused immediatly in such a supersticious town. She was a slave, a black person (she was thought to be an African, but she was from South America), and she telled strange, fordbidden stories.After all the deep research, I can say that Tituba is not only the first person that confessed that she was a witch, but she’s also a key character in the events, without her, the Trials might nothave ocurred.

The tragedy started when Tituba arrived with reverend Parris to Salem and started to tell magic and fantastic stories from the Caribbean to the girls of the town, obviously, thiswas a secret for the rest of the people in Salem. But then, in the winter of 1689, some of the girls started to show terrible sinthoms of (according to the people of Salem) a witchcraft act. Tituba andher husband preparated a “witch cake” to reveal the identity of the witch, but this just made her to be pointed as guilty. Also, the girls confesed Tituba was a witch. The slave was pressed andtorturated by Parris until she confessed, but she did also another thing, she accused more people, an action that finally unleashed a terrible witch hunt.

Tituba maybe is not the most famous characterof the Salem Withcraft Trials, but she’s the one that inculcated those ideas on the girls, and also the one that started all the accusations, she is the one who really provoked the witch hunt....