The story “Wicked Girls” is a novel about the young girls who accused people of Witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. Throughout the book, the author explores themes like honesty, leadership, corruption, and integrity. As the girls fake their abductions, they begin to argue about who to accuse for their pain and who to declare innocent. Anne and Mercy often consider themselves superior to the other girls, and don’t hesitate to humiliate them when they do something that might be harmful to the group. By the end of the story, they become so worried in who’s the leader and who’s more powerful that they pay less attention to making their act real, and get caught.
The novel takes place in 17th century Salem village, a small puritan town in Massachusetts. The laws there are very strict, and the people’s lifestyle is based around religion and going to church. Since God is so important, anything that is against His will or even not for his benefit is severely punished. The people strongly believe in satan, demons, and devils, as well as witches. There are three very different main characters in the story. The first one is Ann Putman Jr., a twelve year old girl from a powerful family in Salem Village. Next is Ann’s cousin, Margaret, who is seventeen and soon to be married to Isaac, a young man from the village. Finally there is Mercy, an orphan form the French- Indian war who goes to Salem to work as a servant in the Putman house. The story begins when Ann’s cousins, Abigail and Betty, get an illness which includes symptoms such as random outbursts and cries amongst others. Everyone immediately assumes that it is witches who are torturing the girls and appearing in their dreams as spectrums. Anne takes this as an opportunity and pretends that she too is abducted. She says that she sees Sarah Good, an old beggar, torturing her in her dreams, and she is put in jail the next day. After she realizes just how much power she has, she tells her servant, Mercy, and her cousin, Margaret, to pretend to be abducted too. The girls soon start putting dozens of the innocent citizens in jail, until the people of Salem start questioning wether or not it’s fair to arrest them based on a spectrum. After this type of evidence is no longer valid in the court, the girl’s power is gone and they are humiliated by the rest of the town.
While reading the book, it reminded me of the stories, movies, documentaries, etc. that I have seen of the Holocaust. The reason why I made this connection is because it shows that both times in history people were killed only because another person said so, whether they were “witches” or wether they were Jews. In neither cases did anyone have any evidence or arguments to kill the people other than the fact that an other person, who was probably a good at talking and very persuasive, said they should be killed. I think that society has committed these types of crimes many times before, such as in our summer reading book for Spanish, where the Spanish conquistadors killed the Incas because they were “savages” and because the gold ran out. As a conclusion, I think we should learn from the past and make sure that there is strong evidence and reason for killing a person or group of people.
If I were to rename the book, I would call it “The Chosen Girls of Salem Village”. I think the title should decently contain the word “girls” because thats one of the most interesting part of the book, the fact that they were teenage girls. Also, I think that when the reader sees the word “Salem” they immediently think of the Salem witch trials, which could give an idea to what the book is about without being to specific. Lastly, I would choose the word “chosen” because that how the girls were often referred to by the other people of Salem, as if they were chosen to see who the witches were. As a whole, I think the title is very persuading and it makes it sound like the girls were some kind of legend or hot topic and the author was giving you an inside look to their lives and their story.
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