Friday, November 7, 2008
The Heretic's Daughter, Question #5
At the time of the novel, Massachusetts had been through a difficult period of plague and crop failures. Does society foster the need for a ‘witch hunt’ or pariah around which to rally for blame in times of crisis? Can you name other times when this has happened?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
Unfortunately I do think it is human nature to look for a scape goat in times of hardship.
I wanted to ask you a question: Is it my imagination or did Henry (Sarah's cousin) just disappear from this book. Maybe I missed something???
Hmm... I think Henry did just disappear. I wonder if it's because there wasn't as much information available to the author about him? I'll have to paw through the book and look again. I've already returned it to the library, but I'll look when I go to the bookstore.
I think society does look for witches in times of trouble. When people are scared, it helps them to have a rallying point, something that creates a commonality, and the least powerful members of society are easy targets. I think that overt events are more common in societies that we would consider to be 'third-world', where religious governance converges with the belief that mysterious magical powers control things such as plagues, etc. In general, though, whenever something happens that frightens us, people do look to demonize, like after 9/11 or during WWII when the American Japanese were rounded up to be put into camps.
Post a Comment