Killer Revenge

It happened yesterday, and also the day before that, because revenge is happening all the time. But the author Sir Francis Bacon claims those that seek revenge, end up hurting themselves. In Bacon’s essay of Revenge he states “Wise men have enough to do with things present and future-therefore, they who labor in past matters do but harm themselves.” This claim appears in several other parts of literature. The claim occurs in things like the short story The Interlopers by Saki with the long lasting feud, along with the famous play from William Shakespeare with The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and the heartbreaking end for them, and lastly the Biography of Takashi Tanemori and his struggle with the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Bacon’s idea of revenge is proved true because it occurs in The Interlopers, Romeo and Juliet and the biography of Takashi Tanemori.

The author Saki writes an ironic story called The Interlopers, it gives a moral lesson about getting along, and how it is best not to take revenge. The Gradwitz and Znaeym family have been in a family feud for three generations over forestland, and the only thing both families have been taught is to hate each other. Both Ulrich and Georg head out into the woods, ready to kill each other, “Each had a rifle in his hand, each had a hate in his heart and murder uppermost in mind,”(Saki 305). This revenge between Georg and Ulrich can only make things slowly worse when they meet; because disaster struck, pinning the enemies down under a tree where they were harming themselves physically and emotionally. The enemies try to get along, but it is too late “‘who are they?’ asked Georg quickly, straining his eyes to see what the other would gladly not have seen. ‘Wolves,’” (Saki 310). As a puni...

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...n proved in the previous pieces of literature as well.

Literature like The Interlopers, Romeo and Juliet, and the biography of Tanemori demonstrates Bacon’s revenge idea where harm is given to them when they seek revenge. First, in The Interlopers, Georg and Ulrich seek revenge on each other, as a result; they die from wolves and their family feud continues. Next, in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo seeks revenge on Juliet’s cousin Tybalt; his punishment for revenge is being banned and then later on killed, though his family feud with Juliet ends. Lastly, in Tanemori’s biography, Tanemori spends his life constantly wanting revenge on America; therefore he ends up realizing his life is being wasted, so his feud with America ends. In conclusion, Bacon’s idea has a very accurate way of depicting what will happen when one seeks revenge in either literature, or real life itself.