Are Revenge and Justice the same thing?

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Many people confuse revenge and justice as similar or the same thing. They think that taking revenge on someone basically serves as justice. Is this true?

In the book Song of Solomon, Guitar justifies the murders committed by him by calling himself "reasonable" and stating that this makes him "better than they are," or the bad and unnatural Whites. But Milkman disagrees with this because it isn't right, and he's not wrong.

What is justice? Justice is the quality of being fair and reasonable. It seeks to prevent injustice by using written laws and not moral issues. This is why courts and judges exist. Justice is also never personal because it doesn't have the affected person deciding the punishment for the person at fault. Justice also has a purpose. It's to give fair treatment for everyone in regard to their personal rights according to the laws.

But what's revenge? It's the action of harming someone for a wrong suffered at their own hands. Revenge destroys injustice based on someone's feelings, not based on the law. The punishment is chosen by the person that was hurt, and his decisions are lead by his feelings. Revenge is also based on morality, which is the opposite of justice, because people do what they think is right and not what's actually right. 

So was Guitar or Milkman right? I think Milkman was right because the people responsible murder of the Negros should've been legally punished instead of making their whole race suffer. Guitar is not only killing with revenge, but also chaos because instead of killing the person responsible for the Negro, he's choosing a random white person to pay for the crimes instead.

In conclusion, revenge and justice are NOT the same because not only do they have different purposes, but they lead to different things. Justice leads to peace while revenge leads to sadistic pleasure. 

Comments

  1. Vivienne Francois' BlogOctober 27, 2019 at 12:27 PM

    This really opened up my eyes. I saw they has both similar and different, but now after reading this I see the power of their outputs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jessie ZhouOctober 27, 2019 at 4:34 PM

    I agree that revenge can't be justified because it's not based on the law; instead, it's based on each person's morals. Injustice is what causes revenge (usually). Great analysis on the difference between justice and revenge. I liked how you connected it to the book also.

    ReplyDelete

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