Revenge is the reprimand that is exerted on someone for a harmful action that they previously carried out.
Revenge is a reprimand exercised on a person or a group of people for an action that is perceived as bad or harmful. The subject who feels affected decides to take revenge and makes a kind of reparation for the damage. Revenge, thus, represents compensation for the injury received.
For some people, revenge is necessary when justice fails; However, if you analyze them in depth, there is not much difference. The problem is that justice does not always work and sometimes allows certain damages to go unrepaired. At that point, revenge may appear, but no longer with the objective of doing justice, but rather of releasing the tension that pain and hatred have caused to germinate in the victim. That is why it is said that revenge transcends reparation care and has an exemplary nature whose objective is to pay in kind or inflict a greater evil on the person who has committed the original damage.
Revenge, ethics and law
Despite how condemnable it may be from a moral or ethical point of view, revenge causes pleasure to the person who carries it out, since the avenger is usually immersed in feelings of hatred and resentment. Revenge, therefore, appears as a relief.
When revenge tries to be exemplary (that is, the damage it causes is greater than the original damage), there is a risk of entering a spiral of uncontrolled violence. For this reason, since biblical times (the book of Exodus ), attempts have been made to establish retributive justice with the lex talionis or Law of Talion , summarized in the sentence "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
In modern societies, revenge is not allowed nor is the Law of Retaliation accepted. Justice is channeled through laws that attempt to be objective and promote social peace and those who break the rules imposed by the current legislative system can be convicted of taking justice into their own hands.
Revenge is condemnable from an ethical perspective.
The concept in literature
Revenge is a theme present in literature since it has existed. In classic works, you can find numerous stories where this is the protagonist . Starting from Greek tragedies , passing through certain novels from the early 1900s and even present in current works.
In "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare , for example, the plot of this play takes place in Denmark and relates the events after the murder of King Hamlet by his brother Claudius . The ghost of the dead man reveals himself to his son to ask him to take revenge. From there an intense story develops where revenge, betrayal , incest and, above all, moral corruption are protagonists.
Another story that uses revenge as the axis of the plot is "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas , which has been made into a film on numerous occasions and is considered one of the great works of literature .
Generally, works where revenge exists as an element tend to use partial madness or the absolute loss of judgment of a person to somehow try to get to the deep reasons that lead a person to harm another person with the aim of making them pay. for something.
Nemesis, the goddess of revenge
It is worth mentioning that in Greek culture they even had a goddess of revenge, the one called Nemesis , whose main peculiarity was that she was not subject to the gods of Olympus and was in charge of punishing the excesses of human beings that disturbed the universal balance. . Likewise, in all ancient cultures there was a certain religiosity regarding revenge, generally cloistered within a series of limits.
Later, with the founding of the Law , revenge began to be considered a negative and vile act that does not collaborate with the common good and, therefore, is also a reason for condemnation.