Justice and Revenge: A Vicious Cycle

     Justice and revenge are two of the strongest ideals that any human being could aspire to. This is why works of literature and film with these ideas in them can be compelling and speak to the human psyche. For example, in the Greek tragedy Eumenides, the Furies practice chaotic justice that demands blood for blood. This is balanced by Athena's democratic justice, which is also in the punishments in Dante's Inferno. However, in the film V for Vendetta, chaotic justice is espoused by the protagonist.

The main theme of Eumenides, the third play in Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy, is justice. The premise of the play is that Orestes has killed his mother (who killed his father Agamemnon) and flees from the Furies to Athens where Athena's court will decide his fate. But the Furies and Athena have vastly different ideas of justice. The Furies are ancient Earth spirits, who believe in the law of equal retaliation (lex taliones) requiring death in exchange for death. This form of justice was practiced by the pre-classical Greeks and allowed each individual to take the law into his own hands and kill a murderer without a fair trial. In contrast, Athena is a younger Olympian deity who believes in the system of democratic justice, which is when a group of people administer justice as a community, not as individuals. The conflict between the two forms of justice is shown during the trial where Apollo, god of rationality, defends Orestes, and the Furies defend themselves with their principle of blood for blood. The new form justice triumphs when Athena herself breaks the tie vote of the court and acquits Orestes. Because individual revenge has no place in this new democratic society, the Furies become the Eumenides (Kindly Ones) and act as guardians of Athens' future prosperity as the principles of orderly, communal justice triumph over the older form.

The idea of orderly justice continued long after the fall of the Greek city-states through the Roman Republic and Empire and into the Middle Ages. One such work that illustrates this principle of justice is Dante's Inferno. In the poem, Dante is a struggling pilgrim who travels through the nine circles of Hell in order to get on the road to salvation. He sees souls punished in a variety of ways (E.g. Gluttons eat each other, the lustful are blown away) but with the same underlying principle: symbolic retribution. Symbolic retribution means that sinners receive a punishment that corresponds to their sin. For example, because the lustful were “blown away” and consumed by their desires in life; they are blown around by the wind in Hell. This may seem like the Furies' “blood for blood” justice, but there are two big differences: Hell is orderly and has a form of due process. Dante's Hell is organized into nine circles that descend in order from lesser greater sin beginning with the virtuous pagans in Limbo and concluding with the betrayers in Cocytus (ninth circle). Therefore, unlike the Furies' endless revenge killings, the punishments in Hell are uniform, infallible, and only apply to the actual guilty party. Finally, Hell was created by God as a prison for Satan and the fallen angels and even has a sub-judge Minos “who stands, hideous and growling/Examining the sins of each newcomer:/With coiling tail he judges and dispatches” (Dante V.3-5). In obedience to God's authority, Minos uses his tail to direct sinners to the circle of Hell that corresponds to their sin in an orderly manner. But this trend of orderly justice does not last long in the arts.

In the latter half of the 21^st century, films containing forms of individual revenge espoused by the Furies in Eumenides became popular. One such film was 2005's V for Vendetta based on the legendary graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Beneath its lofty premise of premise of one man (V) leading a one man revolution versus the future tyrannical government of Britain, there is a basic revenge story at its core. As a youth, V had been experimented on by the government which gave him “super abilities” but destroyed his appearance and life. Therefore, he wants to take revenge on the people (government) that made him this way and eventually sacrifices his life to blow up the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben in order to motivate the people to overthrow the government. Like the Furies, who demanded a life for every life taken, V kills many leaders and foot soldiers and eventually takes his own life to satiate his need for vengeance. Instead of attempting to set up any kind of new government, V decides to take manners in his own hands by killing many government officials including Peter Creedy, the head of the Finger (secret police) and Lewis Prothero, the “Voice of London” who spreads pro-government propaganda to the people. V displays his relish for anarchy and equal retaliation when he tells his lover Evey that “there is no court in this country for men like Prothero” (V for Vendetta).

It is very interesting to find the chaotic, revenge based justice of the Furies in antiquity in the dangerous, anarchic actions of V. Why do you think that revenge stories remain popular in the past 20 years? (The Crow, Kill Bill, Taken, even Magneto in X-Men: First Class) Do you watch revenge films to live vicariously and escape our “boring” justice system, or do you think that these violent avengers might have a point? Does the idea of blood for blood vengeance attract you? Why or why not?