English Seminar Capstone Research Papers
Document Type
Capstone Project
Publication Date
4-15-2005
Abstract
A two-time Newbery Award winning author, Elizabeth George Speare has written four novels, one work on nonfiction, and several plays and magazine articles. Teachers, students, and parents remember Speare's works of fiction because of their ability to bring history to life. In her work The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare writes about a young girl name Kit Tyler and her experiences with Puritans and witchcraft in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Speare describes the people and events of the novel in a memorable way that allows the reader to learn more about America in 1687 and Speare's own commentary about her culture. When Speare wrote The Witch of Blackbird Pond in 1957, America had just endured Red Scare led by Senator Joe McCarthy. Just as the townspeople of Wethersfield feared witches, Americans feared Communists and the Soviet Union. The historical context in which Speare wrote The Witch of Blackbird Pond and the content o fthe novel suggest that Speare's comments on America and McCarthyism.
Keywords
Witch of Blackbird Pond, McCarthyism, Elizabeth Speare George
Recommended Citation
Shortt, Libby, "Witches Among Us: Elizabeth George Speare's Social Commentary on McCarthyism in The Witch of Blackbird Pond" (2005). English Seminar Capstone Research Papers. 13.
https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/english_seminar_capstone/13
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
