According to the introduction to Pillars of Salt, the Christian state was comfortable playing the role of God and revoking life. Those responsible for Morgan’s death described it not as an execution but as his life being “turn’d off” by God. The primarily Catholic idea of infallibility must have transferred over to New England, which did not have a large Catholic population. Petty and relatable crimes, like “lying, cursing, or Sabbath-breaking” were emphasized to scare people into following the infallible will of the church and state. The condemned were not allowed to convey their own messages and instead were “manipulated” to convey a message not only of fear of God, but also of hope. Some men considered themselves “agents of God’s authority” and any actions they took were distorted to show that the morals of the church were right.

Performance: a dramatic representation of events

Performances were important to the change in punishment in America. Authorities pressured the condemned into performing rituals of penitence. Criminals also gained sympathy through performance. Packer attested his innocence and used the publicity of his death to shape his identity as a caring doctor and scientist rather than a criminal. Ames was accepted by the people because of his “credible family” and outward gentility, despite his clear criminal behavior.

Hierarchy: a system of ranking and order

Although criminals could express themselves through crime narratives, they could not escape American hierarchy and had to remain within this hierarchy in their texts. People would not accept someone who defied societal rules too much. Mountain never escapes the hierarchical system, even after escaping from the ship on which he served. His race was considered very important by the public. “Refusing to accept either his base social position or the baseness of his racial character, Mountain defied the standard conceptions that shaped the lives of those who read his narrative. Yet, as readers knew all too well, it was a safe defiance; given the requirements of the genre, they knew where, when, and how his defiance would end.”

Secrecy-The justice system in Europe remained secret from not only the public but from the accused.  Foucault notes that “knowledge was the absolute privilege of the prosecution,” as the accused had no idea who was accusing him, any evidence or documents being used, or the names of any witnesses against him (35).  The modern day justice system is an interesting reversal of this, as we currently make a spectacle of the arrest and trial, while punishment is kept secret. While the spectacle of public torture and execution was intended to reveal truth, the secrecy of the justice system was intended to limit the knowledge of the truth to the magistrates and judges.
Spectacle- Part of the reason that there is a spectacular element to punishment is so that the public will be deterred from committing crimes: “men will remember…pain duly observed” (34). Perhaps more importantly, though, punishment and torture must be a spectacle so that the public can witness the triumph of truth and justice; this is the “ceremonial of justice” (34). In this way the guilty man becomes “the herald of his own condemnation,” every ritual procession and reading of the sentence reinforces the triumph of truth over the accused (43). The public punishment of a condemned man was less about him and more about the audience: as Foucault notes, “in the ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the performance” (57).

Judge-  Foucault’s first real mention of judging is on page 21 with his mention of a trial judge who “certainly does more than ‘judge’”.  The notion of judgment, however, is prevalent throughout this chapter: those watching a public execution are judgmental of both the condemned man and the public punishment that he faces (as we see through multiple criticisms of the practice).  Foucault notes that in the penal system more people have the power to judge (psychological experts, magistrates, etc) than actually have the power to punish.  The new legal system seems to have “led judges to judge something other than crimes,” they must determine an appropriate punishment, and often “pass sentence not in direct relation to the crime”.

Blame- Foucault notes that when punishment shifted from the public to private sphere, “the apportioning of blame is redistributed”: that is, the shame of a public execution which often brought “pity or glory” to the victim has been replaced by a more secret shame of a modern execution, something that is made private in order to separate it from the justice system that ordered it.  The secrecy surrounding executions makes them seem more like a necessary evil than a spectacle that the public is a part of.  The increasing secrecy of executions seems to point of a sense of shame about the penal system, a feeling that the justice system is blamed for them.  By eliminating the “glory in punishing”, the justice system separates itself from the ugliness of executions and the blame that they receive for them.