User:Hexus One

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice depicts a city of discrimination, unfairness and injustice. We witness as one man attempts to break even with the world and fails to do so, as the rest grasp things differently. The text displays how justice, law and revenge are each their own tube of paint, to be mixed and painted onto the wide canvas of the world, creating the vivid picture that is morality. This in itself is only a puny dot in the pointillist collaboration that is the world. However, many will have a different view of life and will interpret the three very, very differently in their own way. Justice can be revenge and vice versa, but it relies on opinion. They both involve doling out some punishment for the criminal. Revenge is almost always carried out by the suppressed individual (ie. Shylock) against the perpetrator (ie Antonio) in an attempt for him to “get even” (in this case, trying to kill Antonio for calling him a dog) and justice, on the other hand, is usually carried out by a third party that was entirely unaffected by the incident and is seen to be “what’s right, he/she deserves it”. Revenge is intended to bring the satisfaction of “payback” to the initial victim, but isn’t always entirely morally correct, as it is influenced by the individual and is often more severe than the initial crime. Justice is intended to give the correct punishment to the correct people, and is given by a larger group of people. Of course, it’s possible to fulfil both needs for a well-deserved, morally correct, but in the case of the Merchant of Venice it never happens unless you think forced conversion is fine. There is no definite point where a desert becomes the plains, likewise there is no point where punishment stops being justice and becomes revenge, as it usually varies between each person’s outlook and other finicky details that are taken or not taken into account. The two are influenced by perspective, relying on personal view, culture, upbringing and background to draw the lines. Law and justice are not the same thing. It’s always completely possible to have one and not the other, where the robber gets away clean with your flat-screen or where the recent beheading of that particularly irritating neighbour wasn’t exactly legal. Law makes a fairly good attempt to deal the appropriate justice to the offender, but since law involves drawing straight, thin lines at the exact point marked HERE (please sign), it doesn’t always work. Of course, everyone will have a different point of view, and environmental factors such as cultural influences, emotional impact and other iffy things that can’t be accurately and precisely measured by tape-and-pencil will change where that line is drawn and how many LOTR books are needed to figure out how hazy the line is. Take one example, where Shylock demands his bond and that the “pound of flesh, to be cut off” is taken from Antonio. To everyone’s eyes, that is technically the law. You can’t deny that the scrappy piece of paper is there, but you can deny whether or not the stingy bastard deserves it. You might say “Ah, but he didn’t pay his monies” or “No, you shouldn’t do that sort of thing”. The law itself is a definite thing, but the justice dealt is a more uncertain, wavy principle. William Shakespeare excels in building a high calibre viewpoint on morality and the relationship between justice, law and mercy, and successfully establishes the dissimilarity between the three as society endeavours to maintain balance and order.