The True Devils In Salem Essays - Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible

The True Devils in Salem English - The Crucible by Arthur Miller The True Devils in Salem In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the madness of the Salem witch trials is explored in great detail. There are many theories as to why the witch trials came about, the most popular of which is the girls' suppressed childhoods. However, there were other factors as well, such as Abigail Williams' affair with John Proctor, the secret grudges that neighbors held against each other, and the physical and economic differences between the citizens of Salem Village. From a historical viewpoint, it is known that young girls in colonial Massachusetts were given little or no freedom to act like children. They were expected to walk straight, arms by their sides, eyes slightly downcast, and their mouths were to be shut unless otherwise asked to speak. It is not surprising that the girls would find this type of lifestyle very constricting. To rebel against it, they played pranks, such as dancing in the woods, listening to slaves' magic stories and pretending that other villagers were bewitching them. The Crucible starts after the girls in the village have been caught dancing in the woods. As one of them falls sick, rumors start to fly that there is witchcraft going on in the woods, and that the sick girl is bewitched. Once the girls talk to each other, they become more and more frightened of being accused as witches, so Abigail starts accusing others of practicing witchcraft. The other girls all join in so that the blame will not be placed on them. In The Crucible, Abigail starts the accusations by saying, "I go back to Jesus; I kiss his hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!" Another girl, Betty, continues the cry with, "I saw George Jacobs with the Devil! I saw Goody Howe with the Devil!" >From here on, the accusations grow and grow until the jails overflow with accused witches. It must have given them an incredible sense of power when the whole town of Salem listened to their words and believed each and every accusation. After all, children were to be seen and not heard in Puritan society, and the newfound attention was probably overwhelming. In Act Three of The Crucible, the girls were called before the judges to defend themselves against the claims that they were only acting. To prove their innocence, Abigail led the other girls in a chilling scene. Abby acted as if Mary Warren sent her spirit up to the rafters and began to talk to the spirit. "Oh Mary, this is a black art to change your shape. No, I cannot, I cannot stop my mouth; it's God's work I do." The other girls all stared at the rafters in horror and began to repeat everything they heard. Finally, the girls' hysterics caused Mary Warren to accuse John Proctor of witchcraft. Once the scam started, it was too late to stop, and the snowballing effect of wild accusations soon resulted in the hanging of many innocents. After the wave of accusations began, grudges began to surface in the community. Small slights were made out to be witchcraft, and bad business deals were blamed on witchery. Two characters in The Crucible, Giles Corey and Thomas Putnam, argue early on about a plot of land. Corey claims that he bought it from Goody Nurse but Putnam says he owns it, and Goody Nurse had no right to sell it. Later, when Putnam's daughter accuses George Jacobs of witchery, Corey claims that Putnam only wants Jacobs' land. Giles says, "If Jacobs hangs for a witch he forfeit up his property - that's law! And there is none but Putnam with the coin to buy so great a piece. This man is killing his neighbors for their land!" Others also had hidden motives for accusing their neighbors. Once the accusations began, everyone had a reason to accuse someone else which is why the hangings got so out of hand. The wave of accusations can be likened to mass hysteria, in which the people involved are so caught up that they start having delusions of neighbors out to do them harm. One of the main accusers, Abigail Williams, had an ulterior motive for accusing Elizabeth Proctor. In The Crucible, Abigail believed that if she got rid of Goody Proctor, then John Proctor, her husband, would turn to Abby. John Proctor had an affair with Abigail, but for

Albert Bandura Essays

Albert Bandura Essays Albert Bandura Paper Albert Bandura Paper Writing Assignment #1 Bandura, Ross, Ross (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models In 1961, Bandura, D. Ross, and S. Ross conducted an experiment on 72 pre-school children to examine and explore the â€Å"Social Learning† theory. The Social Learning theory suggests that human behavior is observationally learned through modeling: from observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed. They predicted that subjects Method: Design: The participants were chosen by opportunity sampling from Stanford University Nursery School. Participants consisted of 36 boys and 36 girls, and two adults, a male and a female, both being a role model. The participants were divided into eight experimental groups of six subjects each and a control group consisting of 24 children. Half of the experimental participants viewed aggressive models, while the other half were shown nonaggressive models. These groups were then further divided into male and female subjects, and half of the children in the aggressive and non-aggressive groups observed same-sexed models, while the other half observed opposite sex models. The control group was not exposed to any adult models The subjects were assessed on four five-point rating scales by the experimenter and a school teacher. These assessments measured the extent to which the children demonstrated verbal aggression, physical aggression, aggression toward intimate objects, and aggressive inhibition. Procedure: Subjects were individually brought to the experimental room and were escorted to one corner of the room, which was their play area. After seating the child at a small table, the experimenter explained how subjects could construct and design pictures with potato prints and picture stickers. The model on the other hand was brought to the opposite corner of the room which consisted of a small chair, table, mallet, tinker toy set, and a 5-foot inflated Bobo doll. The experimenter explained to the model that the materials provided was for him/her to play with. With participants in the aggressive condition, the model assembled the tinker toys and portrayed acts of aggression towards the Bobo doll; the model continuously punched the Bobo doll, used a mallet to hit the Bobo doll’s head, and tossed it up the air and kicked it. Furthermore, the model interspersed with verbally aggressive comments such as, â€Å"Kick him†¦Ã¢â‚¬  and â€Å"Throw him in the air. † Conversely, with subjects in the non-aggressive condition, the model assembled the tinker toys in a silent passive manner, and completely disregarding the Bobo doll. Moreover, the model made non-aggressive comments such as, â€Å"He sure is a tough fella,† and â€Å"He keeps coming back for more. † After 10 minutes, the experimenter informed the subject that he would now be brought to another game room. The subjects were then taken into another room filled with interesting toys, some of an aggressive type such as, a 3-foot Bobo doll, a mallet and a peg board, and some nonaggressive such as, a tea set, crayons, and coloring paper, a ball, and plastic farm animals. The subjects were observed through a one-way mirror, and behaviors such as, physical aggression, verbal aggression, and the number of times the mallet was used to strike the Bobo doll was assessed. Results: Confounds within study: There are minimal confounding variables within the experiment as Bandura, Ross, and Ross used a laboratory experiment method to conduct their esearch. The utilization of a laboratory experiment method allowed the experimenters to standardize conditions for all the subjects and acquire greater control of extraneous variables, which therefore led to a stronger internal validity. Internal validity is the degree to which an observed effect is due to the experimental manipulation rather than other fact ors such as extraneous variables. Some possible confounding variables were avoided and controlled. Firstly, the individual differences were controlled by ensuring subjects were rated for aggression prior to the study. This eliminates a possible extraneous factor – individual differences in aggression. Secondly, the subjects within the control and experimental groups were matched for aggressiveness to ensure equal compositions of the groups. As a result, the data could not be affected by pre-existing levels of aggression; therefore, causal relationships can be made. Furthermore, all the subjects were slightly frustrated before illustrating aggressive behavior. The subjects were allowed to play with the attractive toys for a few minutes until they were told by the experimenter that the toys were for other the other children. Hence, the increase in their emotional stimulation was approximately equal, before they were given an opportunity to be aggressive. Lastly, the experimenter rated the aggressive levels of the participants with a nursery school teacher that was well acquainted with children. This decreased the chances of subjectivity. Although most of the extraneous and confounding variables were taken into consideration, there are some confounding variables that may have skewed the results. Since there is high control in a laboratory experiment, there is the possibility of this leading to a contrived situation, and, a loss of real-life validity. As a result, the issue of demand characteristic may have occurred. A demand characteristic is when participants are aware of the experimenter’s expectation and how they are predicted to behave. Hence, participants would alter their behavior to fit the experimenter’s expectation, which would result in unrepresentative and invalid findings. The children might have been aware of what was expected of them; one of the participants said â€Å"Look Mummy, there’s the doll we have to hit† Noble (1975). Importance of the study to the field: Albert Bandura’s success in his experiment has allowed him to prove and verify the Social Learning theory. The Social Learning theory or observational learning is now widely accepted as a useful theory in the field of psychology; it can be used to shape desired and acceptable behaviors and eliminate unwanted attitudes. Some complex behaviors such as, language, would probably never be learnt and developed unless children were exposed to people who modeled them. Observational learning enables children to garner many responses and behaviors in a large variety of settings where the models are performing their daily activities and routines. Some examples of observational learning would be observing parents read and write, parent’s attitude and response toward a certain scenario, moral behavior, and ethical decisions. Furthermore, Bandura has also developed a therapy called ‘’modeling therapy,† which is derived from observational learning. The modeling therapy highlights the importance of learning through observation of role models, and learning about rewards and punishment that follow behavior. The therapy has been proven and is used to eradicate unwanted behaviors, phobias, and anxiety disorders. Bandura’s Social learning Theory is also applied for educational purposes. Educators have learned that observational learning is an effective teaching tool. Observational learning processes â€Å"greatly influence children’s coping with conflict, frustration, academic stressors, and failure† (Zimmerman Schunk, 2003, p. 442). With knowledge of observational learning, they are able to be conscious and aware of their actions, being discreet and certain that they are portraying a morally correct behavior to their students. Traditional behaviorists believed that all organisms learned in the same way; all behavior is learned through the environment, and this was explained through operant and classical conditioning. In short, the learning perspective was limited to these techniques. The discovery and verification of the Social Learning theory has contributed towards the overall shift of the learning perspective to incorporate cognitive and social processes; it demonstrates that learning was not simply based on a set of stimulus-response associations. Furthermore, the social learning theory reaches into the cognitive perspective’s realm, allowing development for more effective techniques. The theory can be seen as a bridge between the learning perspective and the cognitive perspective, as it incorporates attention and memory.

Vision of Byzantine Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Vision of Byzantine Art - Essay Example This particular piece was painted in the year 1293 and is also known as Cavallini’s masterpiece. Cavallini was considered to be a Roman naturalist and was quite influential to other aspiring artists. Pietro mainly remained in Rome and is said to have lived to have been a hundred years ol at his time of death. Certainly, Byzantine art is otherwise known as Christian or religious-bible based art often depicting Biblical characters including God, the devil and celestial beings such as angels. In the particular piece of Cavallini, the depiction of the concept of the â€Å"last judgment† is depicted. This is of course a Biblically based idea that all humans will stand before God as Saint Peter reads from the book of life to determine who will be admitted into heaven and who will be sentenced to hell for their life-long miss deeds. In much of Byzantine art, saints and important Biblical characters are depicted as wearing an ornate halo type headdress. This is often a symbol of one’s good standing in the Kingdom of God or as more rudimentarily, on the good side. Cavallini’s two individuals are in fact adorned with such halos.