[Eli Park Sorensen] The never-ending return to the quandary of revenge

In the film “Seeking Justice” (2011), Nicholas Cage plays the high school English teacher Will who lives a peaceful middle-class life in New Orleans with his wife, Laura. One day, Laura is brutally raped on her way home from work. While waiting in the hospital, Will is approached by a guy named Simon who offers to kill Laura’s attacker in return for an unspecified favor. Simon heads a secret group of citizens who are fed up with the leniency and inefficiency of the authorities, and who have decided to take matters in their own hands. 

At first confused and hesitant, Will accepts the chilling proposition. A short time after, Will receives a letter that contains a photo of the perpetrator ― murdered. This is the beginning of director Roger Donaldson’s most recent film, which tells the story of an ordinary citizen who gradually gets caught up in a violent revenge drama that escalates out of control. The film’s message is that even if it may at first be tempting to seek justice outside the law, the consequences are potentially terrifying. 

Donaldson’s film is a contemporary portrayal of a theme that is as old as the earliest cultural productions in Western history. Indeed, some of the greatest literary masterpieces are composed around dramas of vengeance. Aeschylus’ “The Oresteia” (ca. 458 BC) is a trilogy of plays in which family grudges lead to one act of revenge after another. Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” (1308-1321) is littered with vengeful characters who either ended up in hell because they sought unjust revenge while alive, or unjustly died un-avenged. 

Numerous vengeful characters also inhabit the blood-soaked Icelandic epic “Njals Saga” (written down in the late 13th century), which chronicles the transition of a society based on the lex talionis ― or, eye-for-eye ― principle to a Christian-oriented community of forgiveness. Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (1603) depicts an anguished prince haunted by a ghost demanding revenge. 

And the great American novel “Moby Dick”; or, “The Whale” (1851) is essentially about Captain Ahab’s raging search for the monstrous white whale that once destroyed his boat and took one of his legs. In more recent times, one could add General Maximus’ memorable line in Ridley Scott’s blockbuster “Gladiator” (2000) ― “and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” 

Every age, it seems, has its portions of revenge tales. One might even say that in the beginning there was ― revenge. The oldest known Western literary work, Homer’s “The Iliad” (around the eighth century BC), is an epic about the wrath of a man named Achilles, the greatest warrior among the Greeks. Homer’s story begins in the ninth year of the siege of Troy; the Greek king and commander-in-chief ― Agamemnon ― has forcefully taken Achilles’ allotted war booty, the girl Briseis. Furious and humiliated, Achilles refuses to fight. 

Without their greatest warrior, the Greeks are helpless and the Trojans drive them back to the beach. Alarmed by the situation, Agamemnon returns the girl to Achilles hoping that he can lure the latter back to the battlefield. But Achilles, fueled by a sense of personal injustice, still refuses to take up his weapons. Eventually, Achilles’ loyal friend Patroclus borrows his armor and leads the Greek soldiers in a counterattack ― with great success because everyone believes that it is Achilles himself who has returned ― only to be slain by the Trojan leader, Hector. Hector thus becomes Achilles’ new revenge target, and is subsequently killed in a duel. 

Whereas passiveness characterized Achilles’ act of revenge against Agamemnon, his revenge against Hector is marked by vigor and activeness. In both cases, however, the revenge is essentially private in nature, and, secondly, excessively disproportional. The Greek army suffers a terrible loss in Achilles’ absence ― a far greater loss than the one Achilles privately suffers by losing Briseis to Agamemnon; and, blinded by his private grief over the loss of his friend Patroclus, Achilles is not satisfied merely with Hector’s death ― he drags his body behind his chariot along the city walls so that all the Trojans can watch in horror. In addition, Achilles demands the lives of 12 young Trojans. 

Heroic as it may be, there is something arbitrary ― and thus terrifying ― about Achilles’ measure of revenge. After all, when is enough really enough to quench the thirst for revenge? Heinrich Kleist explores this question in his novella “Michael Kohlhaas” (1808), in which a righteous horse-trader, Michael Kohlhaas, leaves two horses at a castle; the horses are subsequently mistreated by a young nobleman, and when the horse-trader fails to obtain compensation, he decides to take matters into his own hands. Things quickly escalate out of all proportions as Kohlhaas goes on to ravage the castle and burn down several cities in a mad hunt for justice. In an ironic twist, Kohlhaas does eventually get his compensation. However, like Achilles, he pays for his revenge with his life. 

The English philosopher Francis Bacon claimed that “Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to it, the more ought law to weed it out.” Like in Donaldson’s film “Seeking Justice,” the desire for revenge most often emerges in cases where the official legal system appears to be insufficient ― when the authorities fail to do what is just. Susan Jacoby ― in her book “Wild Justice” (1984) ― writes that a “society that is unable to convince individuals of its ability to exact atonement for injury is a society that runs a constant risk of having its members revert to wilder forms of justice.” 

Whereas Homer turned Achilles’ bloody craving for revenge into a heroic epic, today’s notion of revenge has a radically different resonance. In fact, ever since the Homeric age, revenge tales have gradually sought to problematize or pathologize vengeance ― as something fundamentally primitive, inevitably destructive, and thus unacceptable in a civilized society.

Thus, films like “Seeking Justice” or “Law-abiding Citizen” (2009) ultimately reject the legitimacy of revenge. One of the most crucial tasks of a civilized society is to find some kind of just balance between crime and punishment; and the desire for revenge indicates that this task has not been achieved in a satisfactory way. But rather than endorsing the idea of a self-regulated practice of wild justice, most contemporary revenge tales suggest that the collective system of justice is always, despite its flaws, superior. 

Revenge may be sweet, as the saying goes, but most people would probably feel more at ease with the doctrine “avenge not yourself, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

Yet, despite our continued difficulties with the concept of revenge, we keep conjuring up stories of revenge. We keep imagining narratives about the figure who decides to step outside the law and “do the right thing.” For the avenger always ― at least in the majority of our revenge tales ― has a good reason, a good personal motive that would make anyone lust for vengeance; the loss of a loved one, humiliation, theft. The legal system ensures that just punishment is meted out according to a collectively sanctioned set of standards, an impersonal and objective set of rules ― the blindfolded lady justice. But loss, deprivation, or defeat ― all the aspects that cause people to crave for revenge ― are personal, and they call upon our sense of personal responsibility. It is in connection with this conflict ― between the personal and the impersonal notion of justice, or revenge ― that we need narratives that may imagine model solutions. Cultural productions ― from Homer’s “The Iliad” to a contemporary film like “Seeking Justice” ― continuously act out this conflict in an infinite number of variations, articulating ways by which we may learn to control and live with the conflict between our individual desire for revenge and the maintenance of a civilized society. 

By Eli Park Sorensen

Eli Park Sorensen is an assistant professor in the College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University. He specializes in comparative literature, postcolonial thought and cultural studies. ― Ed.