Theme of Justice
Justice means everything to someone when they are denied justice. This is what leads to people taking matters into their own hands in pursuit of justice. However, they end up causing harm to other people in their quest for justice which eventually leads to revenge. Revenge is very different from justice. Justice is a means that is used to make society a better place. Revenge, on the other hand, is solely designed to harm the people who might have offended the people seeking vengeance. Such a circumstance is in the play Medea. The author, Euripides clearly illustrates the danger of seeking revenge in the name of justice. Medea’s husband betrays her, and after the betrayal, Medea takes matters into her own hands and feels justified to seek for avenging the betrayal. Support for the chorus, however, disappears after she kills her children in her pursuit for revenge. She is entirely consumed by the justification of revenge that she ends up marrying the success of her justice. Ovid, on the other hand, has the same opinion on revenge and justice in his poems the metamorphosis. Revenge is rarely the best option especially when it is confused with justice. Ovid portrays most of his acts of revenge in his poem as completely unfair especially since they happen in a spur of a moment. Ovid says that the most common type of revenge is the most unfair as in his poem, when Jove rapes a mortal woman and his wife Juno becomes angry with what has happened, the punishment that she imposes is on the victim of the act instead of confronting her husband. Even though the target of revenge seems justified, there is always collateral damage. Revenge is a messy business in Ovid’s poem, The Metamorphosis.
Revenge in the form of justice is driven by anger and hatred. Her husband betrayed Medea. She tries to find a reason for her betrayal, and this ends up building anger and hatred in her. She thought she was going to seek justice when in a real sense it was revenge that she was seeking. After Jason had left her for another woman, she was consumed with her pursuit for justice. She even ignores the chorus disapproval of her decisions, Jason’s plea for forgiveness and even how they were consuming her from the inside (Feldherr, 17). In the end, she is successful in making sure that Jason’s love is destroyed, but in the process, she had ruined her own life too. In The Metamorphosis, the same scenario plays out. After Jove had made the mistake of raping a mortal woman, his wife felt offended and wanted to seek justice the actions of her husband. She became furious filled with hatred and anger until she decides to take action on the mortal woman who in that situation was the victim of rape from Jove. Jove is not left out. Lycaon had tried to kill him in his sleep because he did not believe that Jove was a god since they had met in a mortal form. After that, he boiled human flesh and tried to feed it to Jove. Jove became furious and wanted to seek justice for this action. The anger that he had led him to seek revenge in the name of justice and he turned Lycaon into a wolf.
Many people seeking justice do not give up seeking it because of their desire to get closure. Juno suspected that her husband, Jove had, raped lo. Jove had turned her into a cow to prevent Juno from finding out the truth, but still, she suspected that the cow was a mortal woman. She even asked Jove for the cow which he gave to her hoping that her suspicions would go away, but she still was suspicious. Since Juno was still skeptical about the true identity of the cow, Jove took it and gave it to Argus to protect Lo. Since Jove could no longer see Lo, he sends Mercury to eliminate Argus. The murder of Argus made Juno even more suspicious. It convinced her that the cow was the girl. The jealous that Juno had driven Lo mad. The same happened when Juno bribed the goddess of childbirth to prevent Alcmena from delivering her baby Hercules. Juno was jealous because the father of the baby was Jove. She did everything possible in her might to prevent the baby from being born. Even though the goddess was tricked by one of her servants and the baby was born fine, the fact is that Juno had done everything in her hands to ensure that the child is not born as justice for Jove making Alcmena pregnant (Griffiths, 39). This shows that most of the people in search of justice are persistent in seeking justice.
Justice is rational and makes society a better place. Revenge, on the other hand, is something different since in seeking revenge, one loses themselves. Medea’s actions to seek justice from the betrayal of her husband seemed to be rational. The problem came in when she stopped seeking justice and started seeking revenge which eventually consumed her. In the process of seeking revenge, he overlooks her responsibility of being a mother and kills her children in trying to make the love life of her husband miserable. She is so consumed by revenge that she does not stop at that and goes on to poison the wife of her husband even after her actions were disapproved by the chorus and her husband pleading for mercy. In The Metamorphosis, Jove’s wife is so consumed by revenge confusing it with seeking justice. She fails to approach her husband with the matter, and her revenge leads her to punish the victim of rape from Jove. She does not consider the fact that the mortal woman was the victim of the actions of her husband. Jove was also consumed with revenge his friend had tried to kill him in his sleep and tried to feed him human flesh. He did not consider that they were friends and ended up turning Lycaon into a wolf. Even though in all these three events they all found the justice they were seeking, there were too many things that were sacrificed to ensure the success of the pursuit for justice.
In the pursuit of justice, there are too many things that are sacrificed which are considered as collateral damage. For instance, in the play of Medea, in her pursuit of justice, she had to sacrifice so many things in her life to get justice. The chorus was against her desires to find justice for her lost love, but they even went ahead and sacrificed her children in pursuit of justice. She was so lost in revenge that she didn’t even consider Jason is begging her, but she went ahead and also poisoned her husband’s wife (Feldherr, 17). The most significant loss she had was losing herself in the process, and after making sure that her husband’s love life was destroyed, she did not find the self-satisfaction and closure that she was looking for. Even though justice was served, it never changed anything since she still felt the same way. In The Metamorphosis, after Jove had raped a mortal woman, his wife lost herself in revenge that she ended up sacrificing the mortal woman who was the victim of the rape. She never confronted her husband about the issue. Jove also had to sacrifice the friendship that they had with Lycaon and turned him into a wolf after he had tried to kill him during his sleep and boiled human flesh and tried to give it to Jove.
It is not easy to overlook justice. The denial of justice leads to the feeling of revenge. This has been brought out clearly in both the play and the metamorphosis. After Jason had left Medea for another woman, she could not overlook and move on to the next step of life. Instead, she decided to make the pursuit for justice above everything else. Instead, her life was completely taken over by revenge, and she could not do anything else apart from looking for revenge. This made her to even take the life out of her children and went against the chorus in pursuit for justice. It did not matter to her what was right and what was wrong anymore except making sure that her husband relationship was destroyed at all costs. It was not also easy for Jove’s wife Juno to just let the raping incident of Jove and the mortal woman go (Griffiths, 39). She had to take action. This is where she ends up punishing the mortal woman who was a victim of the incident because she could not confront her husband Jove over the issue. Jove also had to take action. He could not live knowing that Lycaon had just tried to kill him in his sleep and feed him with human boiled meat. He instead turned Lycaon into a wolf. All in all events, there is always a loss even if they eventually get the justice they seek. They do not seem to get closure.
The road to finding justice is not as easy as many people think. Most of the things are sacrificed in the pursuit of justice. Sometimes people lose close friends and family members while trying to seek justice. Even though sometimes people are consumed by justice and end up not getting the closure they needed they end up messily finding justice. A lot of collateral damage is lost in the process, and people also lose their normal life and respect. They completely lose themselves in pursuit for justice that nothing else matters to them except finding justice. Medea ended up killing her children and poisoning Jason’s wife, and Juno went to the goddess of childbirth to prevent Alcmena from delivering the child of Jove. Don’t get tangled in the pursuit of justice and forget there is a life to be lived.
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