Communication in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692
By Courtney Condy
Communications 121
Edison Community College 

The Salem witch trials took place in the Puritan village of Salem, Massachusetts. Nineteen men and women were convicted of witchcraft and hung. One man who refused to stand trial was pressed to death by heavy stones, and dozens more languished in jail cells without trials. The Salem witch trials could only be described as a wave of mass hysteria that swept the land like a plague, and it all stemmed from one man’s manipulative acts of communication. 

Now, the village of Salem was not a happy close knit family.  In fact, “Salem Village was a contentious place to live and was known to be quarrelsome by neighboring towns and villages”. The village of Salem was rather spread out and had a history of family feuds that may have been a result of poor communication. 

The current minister of the church was a man by the name of Samuel Parris. Parris was originally from England and after a hurricane struck his property in Barbados, he decided to go into the ministry. Eventually, he was placed in Salem with his daughter, Betty; and the slave girl, Tituba. The village had a particular habit of refusing to pay its ministers; and that, of course, made Samuel Parris uneasy and virtually pitted the town against the church. Without his pay, he and his daughter could not afford food or firewood and faced starvation or freezing to death.  The conflict between Parris and Salem came to a head in October 1691 at a town meeting where a portion of the town vowed to stop paying Parris’s wage. The issue was further antagonized by Parris's perceived arrogance when he purchased gold candlesticks for the meetinghouse and new vessels for the sacraments. These issues and others among the villagers continued to grow unabated. In this atmosphere, serious conflict may have been inevitable. 

Then, suddenly, Samuel Parris’s daughter and her cousin, Abigail Williams, accused the slave Tituba and Sarah Good of witchcraft. In February 1692, Betty Parris began having "fits" that the doctor and other ministers could not explain. It soon spread to include her cousin, Abigail Williams, among others. From there, the village erupted into a hysterical, religious reform. Accusations flew from person to person like lightning. Just as Samuel Parris had planned, the people looked to the church for guidance.  

But how? How could an entire village full of people turn on itself overnight? The answer is communication. Firstly, rumors ran rampant through the community. Because of its dispersed settlement pattern, there was a lack of unity and a sense of common purpose that was usually more present in more orderly and arranged communities. This meant that neighbors who had known and cared for one another for years had no problem turning on one another, accusing one another of witchcraft, even when knowing full well he or she was innocent. Other than reading the Bible, lies, rumors, and gossip were all the people had to keep themselves entertained. 

The Bible, God, and the fear of the devil also played a grand part in the Salem witch trials.  When the accusation hysteria began, Samuel Parris wrote and delivered a series of dark, accusatory, and somewhat threatening sermons that stressed the importance of faith and the power of the devil. Samuel continuously proposed evil lurked among the congregation and many sermons contained lines such as: “Christ knows how many of these Devils there are in his Churches. As in our text there was one among the twelve. And so in our Churches God knows how many Devils there are: whither 1. 2. 3. or. 4. in 12. How many Devils, how many Saints. He that knows whom he has Chosen”.  In fact, Parris spoke so obsessively of evil and witchcraft, one might think he stood to gain something from being seen as the only hope of salvation by the people of Salem. How absurd. 

Next, of course, were the trials of Tituba and Sarah Good. Tituba appeared in court, bloodied, bruised, and beaten so badly she could hardly stand. And it was in the courtroom, where the villagers, led by none other than Samuel Parris, drowned out the pleas of innocence made by the accused and condemned their friends and neighbors to hang.  And as long as the trials continued, Samuel found his pay quite secure. 

The Salem witch trials are a prime example of how the spoken word was used as a tool to seize control over a situation, and advance the agenda of one Samuel Parris. By purposefully creating a religious crisis and using his powers of speech over the congregation in order to both win their trust and loyalty and turn them against each other, Samuel Parris was able to turn the tides of war, so to speak. Instead of being at the mercy of the village, the village was at his. 

While some editing may have been done for grammar or clarity, the choice of topic and discussion in this and other Communication 121 student Term Projects is solely the result of the research completed by the student. Read the County News Online introduction for these papers here.