Witches symbolize the need to believe in something greater than the world verified by the senses and understood by the intellect. For a contemporary audience for whom witches are largely harmless Halloween costumes, the novel reminds us that witchcraft is a potent and dark element of religion. The belief in witches dates back to pre-Christianity when certain people in a community, most often angry misfits, non-conformists, or the mentally ill, were held to possess the power to hurt others to cause havoc. With their black magic and allegiance to Satan’s dark powers, witches were to be feared. Their presence in a community was a threat, and they were to be shunned and even killed for the sake of the community. When Indian John witnesses the hanging of old lady Glover, he shares with Tituba his fears over the hysteria that drives otherwise rational people into believing this crazy, homeless woman possessed powers sufficient to make the children of her neighbors sick and even die.

In the novel, witchcraft symbolizes the need to explain bad luck and misfortune and avoid responsibility for bad judgments. However, the villagers turn to the power of witchcraft to heal the sick, tend to wounds, and predict the future. The townspeople of Salem invest belief in the manic actions of the girls and, in turn, use their accusations of witchcraft to provide logic to their lives. Tituba’s entirely made-up prediction for Mary Lewis’s future, a marriage to a wealthy Boston trader, makes the girl feel hopeful that Salem will not be the end-all of her life. In turn, the women accused of witchcraft are blamed for bad weather, sick animals, failed crops, infestations of insects, wolf attacks, Native assaults, miscarriages, house fires, and sudden illness. The settlers use the logic of witchcraft to help explain why, given that God directed their pilgrimage to the New World and designated them as his blessed elect, there were so many setbacks. Witchcraft embodies their doubts, and in persecuting witches as Satan agents, they can exorcise their doubts over God’s providence.

The magic thunderstone that Tituba brings with her from Barbados symbolizes her deep connection to her Caribbean roots. During the long years in the strange and unfamiliar world of Massachusetts, Tituba keeps the small stone with her, wrapped carefully in her dress. It symbolizes her identity and her pride as a West Indian. It reminds her of the hills around Bridgetown and the lush jungles of her home.

In addition, the thunderstone represents the reassurance that Tituba will survive her arrest. The stone was given to Tituba back on Barbados by an old man who lived in the hills. Tituba cures him of a fever using her medicinal unguents. He tells the young Tituba that the thunderstone has the power to tell her when her life is in danger. Hold it tightly, he tells the young Tituba, when you feel threatened. If you feel the stone move “as though it were alive” (206), it would mean she would live. When Tituba understands she is about to be arrested for witchcraft, she holds the thunderstone tightly and feels the stone move. That reassures her that whatever comes of the charges, she will survive.

Finally, the thunderstone symbolizes the supernatural world. That moment when Tituba feels the stone move is never explained away. In this, the thunderstone represents the novel’s deliberate refusal to deny the power of the supernatural. As Tituba clutches it, the stone seems to Tituba to be a “live thing” (206), a moment so shocking to her that she cries out in alarm. Does the object have magical powers? Religions invest faith in inanimate objects as powerful energies that defy rational explanation. Yes, the stone moves in Tituba’s hand; of course, it does not move; it is just Tituba’s need to believe in her safety. The novel refuses to deny the possibility the stone is magic. In this, the thunderstone symbolizes the viability of the supernatural world itself.

The feral cat that Tituba takes in and cares for symbolizes how the Puritan mindset corrupts something wonderful, innocent, and loving into something entirely demonic.

The young cat is a stray Tituba finds along the side of the parsonage. With her husband gone most of the day and given her position as a slave in the Parris household with no friends in the village, Tituba sees the cat as her friend. She falls in love with the cat: ”The cat looked up at her and his eyes were huge—they looked as though they had no bottom—great, clear, pools of amber light” (76). Tituba sees it as a money cat, a Caribbean folklore tradition that says adopting a stray cat brings good fortune. Tituba decides to keep him, feed him scraps, and allow him to sleep inside during the coldest nights. The cat sleeps in the folds of Tituba’s dress while the two sit by the fireplace. She names him Puss and talks to him as the cat follows her. Puss becomes Tituba’s pet, and their relationship symbolizes her gentle heart and compassionate sense of caring. When it is clear she is to be charged with witchcraft, fearing for the safety of Puss, she reluctantly turns the cat out to the woods to protect it from the ignorance and wrath of the town.

That this same Puss becomes evidence of Tituba’s witchcraft and proof of her demonic powers symbolizes the power of ignorance and superstition. At her trial, Tituba is accused of consorting with the cat as a familiar, an agent of Satan able to do her bidding, an absurd charge that Tituba refutes. Yes, she admits she talked to the cat “[j]ust as any person talks to an animal—a horse or a cow. There is nothing wrong with talking to an animal” (232). When Mercy Lewis then testifies to the court that the cat answered Tituba—“Yes, Tituba, I must be off about my business” (233), the girl testifies the cat spoke clearly—the evidence, absurd on its face, is taken as proof of Tituba’s sorcery. The novel uses the stray cat to symbolize the irrationality of the Salem people, their susceptibility to superstition, and, at its most disturbing level, their willingness to weaponize witchcraft to punish people who do not fit in.

The cornstalk doll that the child Dorcas Good brings into the Parris’ house symbolizes the powerful pull of superstition in the Puritan community. Mercy Lewis is alarmed when she notices the little girl’s doll has numerous thorns shoved into it. She understands that the doll, fashioned by her mother, is not just a doll but a poppet. Mercy Lewis is wary of the object: “This is what witches did, made a figure to represent somebody and then stuck pins or thorns in it, and then the person sickened and died” (147). When Tituba asks the doll’s name, the child says, “Patience Mulenhorse,” a child in the community whose family had crossed the mother. When the mother and child depart and the doll is left behind, Abigail tosses the cornstalk doll into the fireplace to alleviate the foul smell of the two homeless people. When the doll hits the flames, the fire suddenly blazes bright, and thick black smoke chokes the room. Mercy thinks the doll twitches in the fire and even cries out, although Tituba wisely assures her the sound came from an alarmed Betsey.

When Reverend Parris returns and tells them about the death of the Mulenhorse girl—she was too close to the fireplace, lost her balance, fell into the flames, and was burned alive—the incident confers magical powers on the cornhusk doll. Despite how the novel explains each phenomenon—corn husks cause fires to momentarily blaze and burn black smoke, and the twitching of the burning doll is simply a physical reaction of the husks to the fire—the poppet symbolizes how easily people unwilling to live in a world of accidents and misfortune allow superstition to give the world order and logic. The child did not die by accident. That would allow for a world of purposeless blind chance. Rather the poppet provides a world in which the child died because of the cunning power of sorcery.