the strategies behind the reactions and the counterstrategies lar the delinquents and the audiences. The delinquents of the ’die game’ kind and those in the social elite trivialising the events and therefore saw them primarily as entertainment together attacked and undermined the theme of warning implicit in the executions.825 When William Fly in Boston of 1726 refused to repent it was interpreted as a threat to society worse than his activities as a pirate. He refused to become the contrite and penitent example. Instead, he became a dangerous example of defiance.826 He was seen as a rather extreme example of ’die game’. Such delinquents set the example of the condemned not having to conform to the demands of officials and of society. By asserting their independence and thereby, as far as possible, using their executions for their own purposes, they showed that the condemned also could have and carry out an independent agenda.827 To ‘die game’ was however rarely theologically extreme – rather a determination to preserve dignity and not conform is at centre of the behaviour patterns identified as ’die game’. Vic Gatrell notes: “Self-parody and the display of courage was one way of dealing with terror. Defiance was another.”828 Many of these delinquents wanted to ”pursue repentance and to die well, if on their own terms.” Andrea McKenzie also makes the interesting observation that ”the game criminal resembled not so much the penitent as the martyr.”829 She also identified ”perhaps the most subversive of all the messages communicated by the game criminal” as the certain confidence of being forgiven by God and going to heaven.830 These distinctions inside the ’die game’ pattern show reactions that could be primarily aimed for oneself or for others. On one hand, there could be a detachment, at least on the surface, from the execution scene and death itself.831 On the other hand we for example find Thomas Laqueur describing “overt resistance with the apparent in825 Krischer 2008a p 238 sqq. 826 Williams 1987 p 234. 827 See Cohen, DA1993 p 66 sqq. 828 Gatrell 1994 p 34. 829 McKenzie 2007 p 191 sqq (quotations p 194). 830 McKenzie 2007 p 203 sq (quotation p 203). 831 Bastien 2011 p 215, 217 sq. 233
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=