mountain

Money- Joseph Mountain is a criminal for pure monetary gain—he robs people because he likes money, and likes money because he likes to live well: “the repeated robberies had furnished us with cash in abundance, and we indulged in every species of debauchery” (291).  His narrative is filled with details of how much money he robbed from people or how much items were worth if they didn’t have any cash.  When Mountain joins a highway gang, one member is kicked out because he only produces sixteen guineas: profit becomes the mark of a good criminal.  When describing his wife, all Mountain tells us is that she was white and eighteen before telling us how much money she had, and that he spent it all.

 

Duty- The gang of highway robbers that Mountain eventually joins sees stealing money as a duty: “we were soon convinced that he had cash in plenty, and that ‘it was our duty to get it’;” (295).  Mountain feels a real sense of duty to his highway robbery gang, and in fact sticks with them from England to France.  He never discredits them by blaming them for the crime that he is eventually executed for.

 

Guilt-  Interestingly, the crime for which Mountain is executed takes up only a few paragraphs of this relatively long narrative: he is very concerned with making himself a guilty character more than guilty of one specific crime.  We get a long explanation of the robberies and petty thefts that he commits, the short periods of time in which he is legally employed, and only a mention of the supposed rape that ends his life.  Although he argues that he didn’t really rape the girl, he says that the court was kind and lenient (despite quickly convicting him and sentencing him to death), probably because he sees himself as a guilty man in general, and thus deserving any punishment.