Dear Readers of Conversion,
The second semester of 2012, my
senior year and last semester ever at St. Joan’s Academy, was a mess for
everyone. By mess, I mean a truly unexplained, chaotic mania. With everyone
applying for college and trying to get the best grades possible, there was no
time to just relax and let out all the stress we had. According to a woman from
the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, in result of all of the unusual
stress, Conversion Disorder was taking over our school.
Before everyone knew
what was causing the unnatural and different physical symptoms many of the
girls at my school were suffering from, we called it the “Mystery Illness”.
There were many different assumptions about what was happening, but no one
could come to sense of what it was. During all of this excitement I was
fighting for valedictorian with Fabina and trying to get into Harvard. When I got
a 65 percent on a quiz in AP US History, you could understand my frustration.
The only way I was going to make up for this awful grade is extra credit, so Ms.
Slater offered me some if I did a “research paper on someone from
the Salem panic who’s been either written out or turned into a composite by Mr.
Miller” (132). This is how my confusion originally started.
The person I picked to write my
paper about was Ruth, whose real name was Ann Putnam. Some people might think
that Arthur Miller changed her name to avoid confusion between her and her
mother, whose name is also Ann. Ms. Slater encouraged me to look past that and
find the real reason for the change, which ended up not only being a name but
her whole part in the trials. While learning more about Ann Putnam and what
really happened, I was also learning more and more about the mystery illness.
I found out that Danvers, where we currently lived, changed its name in 1752
from Salem Village. I also discovered that Ann Putnam admitted to faking
everything and all the accusations were false. I managed to relate this to the
mystery illness, and began to believe all of the girls suffering were faking
just like the afflicted girls. Around this time I myself started suffering from
the mystery illness. Even though I was pretty set in the fact that the other
girls were faking their symptoms, I started to believe in it.
I guess I couldn’t help myself; it
was like it was uncontrollable even though I knew it wasn’t real. This relates
perfectly to Ann Putnam, and what she went through. The difference is Ann knew
she was faking from the start and she did it to protect Abby from getting in
trouble for lying. But eventually, she couldn’t help but lie and make things up
about the “witches” that were accused.
After everything was settled and
the mystery illness was named conversion disorder, I still felt weird. When I
went to Emma, my best friend’s, house her mother said something extremely odd. She
said Emma’s “Prone to spells”(393).
What was that supposed to mean? It was so weird that it made me wonder if the
conversation I had with her was even real. After graduation when everything was
normal again and I was about to leave for Harvard, I look out my bedroom window
and see a tiny yellow bird. From the research I did, I found that there was a
tiny yellow bird the afflicted girls said they always saw with the witches.
The tiny yellow bird got me
thinking about what Emma’s mother had told me. All of these weird things had to
have meant something. Maybe Ann admitted to faking it because she truly thought
she was, but she wasn’t. Maybe witches are what caused all the chaos and Emma
or her mother were the witches. Or maybe I’m just overthinking this and
its the conversion disorder.
Sincerely,
Colleen
Rowley
