How Revenge Shapes our Literature and Society

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The human mind is filled with plots of revenge and attempts to counteract this. We spend most of our lives thinking about how to extract satisfaction from a person or moment in time that did us wrong. In the world today, revenge runs rampant in the western world. Third world nations and organizations claim to be extracting revenge for their exploitations by the westerners. I am not the one to decide if this is justified but like with most cases of revenge there are always innocent people that suffer. In literature, most plots are based around suspense and intrigue, you can’t use these two effectively without the theme of revenge. I believe that over 50% of the things I have read in my life either have a plot or sub-plot of revenge. This paper will attempt to illustrate how revenge shapes our literature and more importantly our society.

The idea of revenge has existed as a staple of human society for as long as we as a race (human race) can remember. We are the only species on this planet where its seems as thought revenge is the very thing that fuels our society. Most other animals let things go and see them as just a part of the cycle of life humans, are quite different. We want to extract punishment for every little infraction committed against us even if it’s not major. We are a society that believes a lot in fairness and one of the main ways to keep things “fair” is with revenge. As we have seen over the past several months in our society is so called revenge at its worst. This is the scenario where thousands of people having nothing to do with a certain case of revenge suffer. I believe this is true on both sides of the table. We sometimes confuse revenge with justice and I believe that September 11, and events similar have helped to blur the line between the two. I think revenge shows up so much in life because it’s a part of human nature. I think it shows up in literature because fiction and non-fiction books imitate life. Our literature is a reflection of what is going on in a society. If you want to know what was happening or what the social norms were for a certain time period all you have to do is read the popular fiction of the time.

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