Leslie Palencia
Dr. Lewis
English 302
5 March 2013
Revenge Tastes so Sweet A loud siren call echoes through the streets of a dark deserted alley way of a sleeping urban town. Someone call the police! A cry for help. A person has just been killed and they were pronounced dead early morning. Silence fills the funeral room as the weeping family demands the person who committed this act of murder. One soul stands beside his family will sadness and rage filling his heart, the person who has done this must be found and put to justice. This is what is known as revenge is a manifestation to some of the most endogenous feelings within each of us. More than half of human society preys on the word “revenge” why? Because it is almost a natural instinctive way to get back at someone for what they have done to harm one ’s self. Whether it is from verbal abuse at school to physical violence and getting back at that person for hurting your best friend. Like the saying goes “revenge is sweeter when given.” This only leads to hatred breeds hatred and self-loathing if a person murders someone because revenge by definition invokes emotion therefore will inflict pain to the individual.
As defined in Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, revenge is an act or instance of retaliating in order to get even for self satisfaction or justice. Behavioral scientists have found that instead of delivering justice, revenge often creates only a cycle of retaliation, in part because one person’s moral equilibrium rarely aligns with another’s. With this said, people often want to see justice brought to those that have suffered a loss of someone close to them. Naturally a family would want justice brought upon the serial killer who had brought death upon someone dear to the victim. Then the killer would be sentenced to life in jail without parole. Would this be justice for the family? Some wouldn’t think so; some individuals would take it upon themselves to make sure that the person who killed their family member gets what they deserve. Revenge in due time will become loathsome, painful, and then turn into suffering. It can change a person to becoming almost the same as the killer that committed murder in the first place. According to CNN contributor, LZ Granderson’s article Justice, not revenge, for Trayvon, “Nothing good can come from a bunch of vigilantes hunting down and possibly harming another vigilante, regardless of how noble the motivation for doing so may appear on the surface.” To go into detail, the desire to harm another in revenge and think that “revenge cleanses” is justice, is an unjustified crime to the eyes of society. There are cases that in which are psychological. According to another article by Anna Jane Grossman, “Revenge fantasies are normal, says Jeffrey Kaye, a San Francisco psychologist who specializes in couples counseling.”There is a certain element of wanting to set things right according to some universal truth -- an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Who is to say that revenge can bring justice to themselves? What Grossman is trying to explain to her readers is that the fight between Teri Garr and her boyfriend ended up cheating on her with another girl and that same boyfriend cheating on the girl he was cheating with in the first place. Garr then decided to vandalize his property. In her defense she was angry and sought vengeance. it is very controversial; the people who act upon this selfish desire are more than likely walk down a dark path and will lose themselves mentally because of their act. They will wind up hurting themselves and people known to them. It may deem right at the moment given to them but sooner or later it will wallow inside that person and eventually consume them as a person. Revenge wishes to bring equilibrium from a subjective viewpoint only to preserve inner stability, to balance the atrocities suffered and nonetheless it brings travesty, anguish, and malevolence to that individual. Unlike some