The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

only the witch-trials that brought this conflict out into the open?
The answer is that the trials offered a means for the Putnam family, which had been on the
losing end of this struggle since the mid-1600s, to revenge themselves against their more successful
competitors in a way that preserved the illusion of godliness: for the accusations were not seen as a
deliberate attack by one family against another (although some villagers certainly had their suspicions
from the beginning), but rather as a purification of the community from an assault by the Devil himself.
And indeed, this ability of the trials to transform petty local grievances into battle with the Lord of Lies
was not a property of the Putnam clan alone – part of the reason why the accusations spread so far
afield (to places like Ipswich, Topsfield, and above all Andover) was because of the opportunity for
revenge that these accusations offered. The case of Timothy Swan offers a stark example of how a man
could bring his enemies to utter ruin by claiming to have been attacked by witchcraft (for which no
direct evidence was possible).
Certainly, it cannot be possible that the (very) young Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam Jr.
would have chosen their victims randomly, and just so happen to have lighted upon those families and
individuals that had been a problem for so long. For the girls named people they could not possibly
have known about – names that would have been suggested to them as likely culprits by concerned
family-members (and there is no need to doubt the sincerity of their concern). Indeed, the names
suggested would have been most likely to be those of known enemies – those who would have been
most likely to wish the family harm, and potentially willing to make a pact with Satan to carry that
harm out. In other words, it is not necessary to assume the irrationality of the actors in this drama to
explain the irrationality of that drama's conclusion: in a world in which people accepted witchcraft
(whether the mass belief in black magic, or the elite belief in the Satanic conspiracy), the appearance of
mass-seizures unexplainable by medical science of the time would have immediately made witchcraft a
likely source of the trouble. Furthermore, the pre-existing tensions in the community would have
provided the afflicted with a number of potential persecutors – it was precisely those who would have a
motive who could be expected to be behind the attacks, and these were precisely the local enemies of
the afflicted. And while we may suspect that several of the afflicted were engaging in deliberate
deception (Mary Warren, Ann Putnam Sr. and Goody Bibber all spring to mind), the willingness of
their relatives and friends to believe their accusations can be explained simply by the fact that they did
appear to suffer, their enemies had the motive to make them suffer, and no one doubted that witches
60