wicked – Discipline & Punish http://blogs.elsweb.org/disciplinepunish Early American Crime Narratives Mon, 11 Jun 2007 02:46:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.3.2 thomas powers http://blogs.elsweb.org/disciplinepunish/thomas-powers/ Mon, 11 Jun 2007 02:46:22 +0000 http://blogs.elsweb.org/disciplinepunish/2007/06/10/thomas-powers/ Continue reading →]]> deceit – having something or someone appear to be something that they are not.  this happened to Powers a lot in his narrative.  Many times after his escape he turned to familiar people to take him in and help him in his time of need, with the end result being betrayal on their part.  I’m not so convinced that this was a factor of his being a convict, or the fact that he was a black man which in that time was a  sort of imprisonment in its own right.

justice – To Powers justice was receiving a punishment suitable for the crime that he committed.  Ravishment was an unforgiveable crime and it deserved an unforgiveable punishment, and what better than death.

wicked – mischievious or playfully malicious (dictionary.com) Powers started out early as a mischievious person stealing things from whomever he lived with.  He admits himself that if he had received a beating severe enough after being caught stealing then that would have stifled his desire to do wrong.  By not receiving that just punishment, it lead to him enjoying his wrong in am almost playful manner and this lead to his becoming wicked.  Wicked enough to fathom rape in his mind and to carry out the act.

]]> My Very Late Post on Patience Boston http://blogs.elsweb.org/disciplinepunish/my-very-late-post-on-patience-boston/ Sun, 10 Jun 2007 19:59:37 +0000 http://blogs.elsweb.org/disciplinepunish/2007/06/10/my-very-late-post-on-patience-boston/ Continue reading →]]> Convictions– Although “convictions” usually suggests an absolute and unwavering value, for Patience it seems to mean a value she wishes she were convinced of.  She talks about abandoning her “convictions” about God and returning to drinking and sin.  Like Esther Rogers, she becomes convinced she is saved, but unlike Esther Rogers, she changes her mind many times.  These wavering convictions seem like more normal human behavior than Rogers’ unflinching conviction that she is saved and special in the eyes of God. 

 

 

Fixation– Patience is obsessed with truth and lying.  She seems to think telling a lie about killing her child is worse than killing her child, saying of her lie  “This I  thought was a greater sin than if I had indeed murdered my child.”  She also says “Having solemnly sworn that I would be the death of the child, I was so far from repenting of it, that I thought I was obliged to fulfill it.”  Instead of stopping the drunken lies about killing her child, she wants people to take those lies seriously.  It’s a strange twist on the commonly held value of keeping one’s word.

 

Wicked– A lot of the process of redemption in these narratives is acknowledging that one led a wicked life and repenting.  Wicked seems to pertain more to the overall lifestyles of the criminals than to the crimes themselves.  Patience describes her first reaction upon being put in jail:  “I was in a distressed condition, not so much for my wicked heart or wicked life; for I saw little of either:  as for fear of death and Hell, not being fit to go into another world.”  This is before her murder of her child; the wickedness she talks about is her drinking, lying, and not praying.  The puritans seemed to endorse a sorrow for offending God rather than a fear of God because one should not be concerned for one’s own state, even though they stressed the idea of hell and made people fear for their eternal lives.

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