Revenge is Self Destructive

While reading the story Wuthering Heights, I noticed the story’s subject of love, but more importantly than love, is the subject of revenge. Revenge started from the very beginning of the story and continued until the very end. Heathcliff is the character that demonstrates the showing of revenge the most. However, Hindley, I believe, started the cycle of revenge and was the cause for all of the times that Heathcliff took revenge on others. Hindley was the only male child of the family until Heathcliff was adopted in. When Heathcliff was adopted in, Hindley felt his empowerment being taken away. Mr. Earnshaw started to pay great attention to Heathcliff, taking some of the attention of Hindley away. Catherine also spent more time with Heathcliff and Hindley became jealous of that.  So after Mr. Earnshaw died, Hindley began the revenge cycle by taking revenge on Heathcliff. Hindley made Heathcliff act as a servant and degraded him so Hindley could take back his place of power in the household. As the characters grew older, Heathcliff began to take revenge on Hindley by encouraging Hindley’s drunkenness and gambling habits. Heathcliff made Hindley indebted to him by knowing Hindley could not repay the loans and Heathcliff then takes Wuthering Heights away from the person who harmed him. Heathcliff takes revenge on Edgar by forcing young Catherine, Edgar’s daughter, to marry Linton. After Linton dies, Heathcliff inherits the Thrushcross Grange property. Heathcliff took revenge on so many people just because of the harmful childhood events he was put through. Heathcliff could have chose to stop the revenge cycle but didn’t and ended up dying because he put all of his energy into taking revenge on everyone. Heathcliff took revenge on everyone to try to justify himself, but in the end it just wore him out and it didn’t make him any happier than he was before.

            The theme of revenge being self-destructive is very prevalent in present day life. Often times people hold grudges on other people and spend ways trying to take revenge on the other person. Many of those times, the person taking revenge still is not satisfied. People would be happier if they let the past times go and forgave the other person. Revenge is not always harmful to the victim, but also to the culprit their self, as Heathcliff demonstrates in the book. If people forgave others and did not focus on the past and on ways to get back at the other person, they would become much happier and could move on and improve their life. By trying to take revenge on other people, a person cannot move on from the past. In order to live a happier life, a person must not focus all of their time on revenge and must focus on letting go of past hardships.