In the story of Romeo and Juliet, there is a scene where Tybalt (Juliet’s cousin) gets in a fight with Romeo’s friend, Mercutio. Tybalt, a hot tempered man, gets serious and stabs Mercutio. Later on, furious Romeo goes to Tybalt and revenges for the death of his friend, Mercutio. As a result of his disgraceful action, he gets exiled from the town. Juliet gets upset by the fact that he is exiled and Tybalt is killed by Romeo. Not only that, Romeo gets a lot more criticism from the family of his ultimate enemy, the Capulets, about his marriage with Juliet . As it is seen in this story, revenge doesn’t bring any positive result or make anyone feel good about themselves afterwards. So what lesson can it teach us? Some may think that this example of Romeo and Juliet is just like a normal everyday conflict that doesn’t bring a very tragic result. But what will be the outcome of a revenge in a big community like the world today?
When people look at the state of this current generation, it’s realized that the subject ‘revenge’ has become a very simple and easy spoken matter. Revenge doesn’t always happen between two subjects but also between communities and countries. There are probably many opinions as to why World War II had started, but one of the main reasons is because
of France’s revenge towards Germany through Treaty of Versailles. Shortly after WWI, the Allied countries met and discussed what they were going to do with the weak countries, which included Germany. The main country that led the Treaty of Versailles was France, and they started blaming the entire fault to Germany and made them repay for all the destruction that was made.
Hitler back then was one of the soldiers that didn’t understand why Germany had to give up and why they had to take all the blame for starting the World War I. Hitler’s deep anger burned against the Allied countries, and his eagerness to get them back have caused chaos around the world, eventually starting another World War. This small incautious act of a country cost millions of innocent lives, destruction in many different countries, Hitler him self’s suicidal, and pains that the people will never forget. All these things happened because of a nation’s grudge towards another nation. “An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind” -Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi, a liberty fighter, claimed that if people start repaying the things they think other dishonest people deserve, the whole world
would be ruthless and corrupt.
After all, people still might think what others did to them has to be justified and it’s totally reasonable, but they have to remember that once they start treating others like they were treated, then they become no different with them. The best type of revenge is to move on and succeed. “The best revenge is massive success” – Frank Sinatra. It’s a lie when people say, “I don’t care about what other people say,” because everyone either becomes a smaller or a bigger person depending on who is around them. But this doesn’t mean that everything they say is true or even reasonable! By showing their enemies that nothing could stop them and that they could move forward in life faster than others, they prove themselves to be a greater person than others thought they were. Ben Affleck said this during his speech at the Oscar Awards in 2013, “You have to work harder than you think you possibly can, you can’t hold grudges, its hard but you can’t hold grudges and it doesn’t matter that you get knocked down in life because that’s going to happen, all that matters is that you got to get up”. Life is too short to hate someone for the rest of their lives.
Justification through Retaliation