Justice Vs Revenge

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Justice and revenge are two similar terms between which exists a very thin line. Both have the intention of correcting some wrong action, whether physical or intangible. The difference lies within how action is taken against the wrongdoer: revenge is emotion-driven, personal, and intentionally harmful, whereas justice seeks rational, fair balance without unnecessary suffering. Despite their dissimilarities, justice and revenge are considered to be exactly the same in Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, especially by the antagonist Hindley Earnshaw. Hindley is the only biological son in the Earnshaw family, and as “a boy of fourteen,” he is nearly fit to be a man (Brontë 37). His family are landowners who own servants that “[hang] about the farm ready for anything that anybody would set [them] to” (Brontë 36). Because …show more content…

When Mr. Earnshaw dies and is replaced by his eldest son Hindley as the family’s father figure, Hindley takes his opportunity to knock Heathcliff down to the lowly rank of “any other lad on the farm” (Brontë 46). Hindley “[drives Heathcliff] from [the family’s] company to the servants…[and] deprived him of the instructions of the curate” (Brontë 46). Hindley was never really deprived of his comfortable societal status or any necessities; he simply received less attention and more criticism than Heathcliff. Hindley’s goal wasn’t to treat Heathcliff the same as he was when he was a child; Hindley takes his childhood neglect too personally, and wants Heathcliff to feel even more degraded than Hindley himself had. Heathcliff is an impressionable young man during this time, so he thinks Hindley’s revenge is the only way to correct injustice. From then on, he devotes his life to searching for justice in the form of revenge, first on Hindley and later on the Edgar Linton as well. Thus, the events of the rest of the book can be traced back to Hindley’s inaccurate understanding that revenge and justice are

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