hidden justice

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Recommended: Importance of justice

Justice can be defined as a way of seeing what is right and wrong and being able to administer it in a correct way. Sometime the act of justice can teeter on revenge more then what is right. There is a very thin line to what we think is right then what actually is. We can see a lot of examples of this in Homer’s Odyssey. Which will be looked at and reviewed in this paper.
The tale of Odysseus fraught with different kinds of examples of justice. At one point Odysseus is traveling on his way back to Ithaca with many of his men with very little food and drink. He has the idea to entrap the cattle of the sun god Helios.
“Father Zeus! The rest of you blissful gods who never die punish them all,
That crew of Laertes’ son Odysseus what an outrage! They, They killed my cattle, the great joy in my heart….day in, day out when I climbed the starry skies and when I wheeled back down from the heights to touch the earth once more. Unless they pay me back in blood for the butchery of my herds, down I go to the House of Death and blaze among the dead!’”(12: 400-410)

What Helios is trying to say here is that for Odysseus men slaughtering his cattle. He demands retribution from so he wants Zeus to strike down the Odysseus’s men so there blood my pay for the blood of his cattle. Is this truly a correct sense of justice? Are the cattle of Helios mere beasts worth the life of humans? You must think in this day and age cattle are worth their weight in gold. To family the loss of a herd of cattle for that year could mean life or death to them. Even though Helios was a god his claim for his cattle were true and Odysseus had no right to openly slay the sun gods cattle. Without permission of the sun god himself.
In the act of justice your claim...

... middle of paper ...

... He is going to invoke the power of justice and slay these traitorous suitors. Is this not the ultimate from of justice for Odysseus? These suitors have threatened his throne and his family. They suitors have dug their own grave at this part of the story they deserve what is going to happen to them in every way. They betrayed Odysseus’s trust and deserve justice by his own hand. This has to be the ultimate form of justice that you can find in the story.
Justice can always be taken advantage of or even be corrupted by people who wish to take advantage of it. In a world governed by justice it must be taken care of and looked after closely by people that know the difference between ruling for justice or just killing because you think it necessary. Justice will always be in this life rather in a book or in a courtroom being handed down by a jury of your own peers.

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