1. retribution– “he thought it no great crime to kill such as he supposed treated him very ill-and did not appear to have a just conception of the heinous crime of murder.” frost’s concept of murder is very unlike a “normal” person’s sense of the crime. he felt that it was okay to kill someone if he thought they had done something wrong against him. his mentality is even more profound considering the way he organizes degrees of crime in his head: that dishonesty was far worse than murdering someone. it is completely opposite of how we think. this suggests that maybe our justice system has, by their decisions of what crimes are worse than others based on the type of punishment decided for each crime, has created the sense we have of why murder is worse than stealing or lying.
2. honesty– honesty, to frost, was very important. he felt that being dishonest was, in fact, what made someone a bad person. his murdering men was not wrong to him- however, if he were to lie about it, that would be the unjust act. “he had high notions of honesty, and appeared much offended when his honesty was suspected.” “he was told that he might plead not guilty, was urged so to do, and was remanded to prison, in order that he might consider of the plea he had made…he persisted in pleading guilty.”
3. death– this narrative shows how frost thought death to be an experience much like a sane person would think about jumping into a cold pool or getting a shot if they had never had one; curious of the feeling it produces. his interest in people dying is comparable to the interest readers had in these narratives. he wanted to see the unknown. he wanted an explanation for something the human mind could not fathom. “being asked why he thought so, he said he had been beating his head against the walls of the prison, in order to know how they felt whilst he was killing them.”