Revenge is something that causes harm to people without it being known. Its consuming natures will cause people to act differently usually through aggression rather than reason. Revenge is an easily rationalized emotion; it is a critical theory to live by. In many stages of life, people experience revenge in some shape or form whether you are being revenged from or you want to take revenge on someone. It is a gray area where there’s is no proper justification for it. I see revenge as a justice of self-being, although there are ways people lose focus and do things that aren’t right, the result comes for the extremality of the situation. In this essay, I will be talking about revenge, what it means to people in society if only harm can be achieved because of it. I will incorporate Hamlet to the discussion to get his reasoning on whether revenge is considered a bad thing or good.
The way we perceive our lives is the way we put ourselves out there in the world we are living in, through our day to experiences to the way we interact with people. People are not always happy every day of their lives; there are times where people get angry and want to take revenge on people. There are many ways people take revenge in forms of aggression, blackmail, karma, or simply not doing anything. All these reasons are valid but do they serve justice. I think, and in the society, I have been brought up in, revenge is only valid when there is a legitimate reason, and nobody in the way is being harmed physically. What I mean by that is revenge is something good for someone’s self-being it makes people stronger and what to achieve something they are usually accused of doing, aggression is often the first thing that comes to someone’s mind, but they will not get you justice. For example, people that have killed another person for doing something terrible is getting revenge in their minds this is justice for them, but by doing that, you are ruining people’s family lives and eventually end up alone.
As we have read through Hamlet, the dominant theme revolves around revenge, Shakespeare makes it apparent that revenge isn’t worthwhile if you will die eventually achieving it, which is interesting to look at because throughout Hamlet he wanted to take revenge for his father’s death. He takes many pauses throughout the play using his mind to make decisions rather than using his fist, and he looks at the actions of others for an explanation. For example, when Laertes finds out about the death of his father, he quickly wants to take revenge without thinking about the situation whereas, Hamlet took all factors to create a reason for revenge. Both of these people are on total extremes and deal with grief differently, which is valid, but I believe having a reason behind the revenge in always essential since at the moment your mind is going to be having a lot of emotions thrown at you but if you take a minute and reason what you are doing and knowing the helpful consequences.
In the society where I was brought up in, there was a stigma of revenge needing to have a valid reason and should not cause harm to others. Which I agree with, but I also think that some types of revenge will be hurtful to others such as emotion revenge. For example, if someone gets cheated on, to get revenge the other person usually does the same thing which is valid and not hurting someone physically but mentally they are both getting hurt. In this situation, I think the leading cause of revenge is that they need to get satisfied with their self so they can move on. It is important to see different sides to every situation and take note to it, everyone thinks differently, but I think overall there needs to be a conscientious that everyone takes time before jumping to do something. Hamlet would agree with this point as I mentioned earlier, he finds the reason before the madness he does like Laertes is always angry and has no means to see the other person’s perspective. Moreover, if someone is wronged they need to try to heal as fast as possible from the emotional pain instead of planning a revenge which can result is a bad scenario.
There are arguments against revenge saying if you take revenge “it makes you as bad as them,” “it’s bad for the society” and “revenge helps no one.” All these arguments are valid but not what I agree with necessarily, I don’t think it makes you as bad as them because the major difference between hurting an innocent individual. Either to distract yourself from another problem and hurting someone who hurt you to remove the pain they caused to you, breaking the law isn’t helpful in society obviously but having a proper justice system might be something that will help from people, in this case, killing innocent people. The argument that “revenge helps no one” is not valid in my opinion, as I see it that there are people that need to be satisfied for being hurt in any shape or form, going back to the society argument if the society had a better justice system people wouldn’t have the urge to take revenge they can simply let people take accountability for their crimes. Furthermore, in Hamlet, he over thought everything especially when taking revenge for his father he had many opportunities, but he didn’t take them, but when it came to killing Polonius he didn’t hesitate, and his impulse took the best of him. In that situation, I think Shakespeare wanted to show two perspectives of how Hamlet handles his emotions and how revenge is being depicted although he had to reason several times for the revenge of his father I think the main point to be noted is that eventually he died and he couldn’t get the satisfaction.
Overall, I think that revenge is a good thing for people to learn from and move on with life. It brings situations in front of you that you need to tackle and make a decision from, not jumping to attack something is a virtue, and you need to take advantage of it. I also believe that you need to have a valid reason and not harm anyone when taking revenge since everyone has a family and you would want the cycle to continue going. There have been arguments against my claims, but overall, I think these arguments have some solution to them such as fixing the justice system and not having people jump to do something without taking time to think about their actions. Besides, Hamlet would agree to my point at some levels since he was well educated and always had a reason before taking action, but on the other hand, he also made some impulse decisions like killing Polonius. So I believe that revenge is a good thing because it helps people grow and move on as well as wanting them to achieve a goal that they have been stuck on.