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Revenge In Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

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Some wounds made by either emotional or physical damage are so deep that they can never heal. This irreplaceable damage can lead to one of the most destructive motivations a human can seek: revenge. If left unattended, revenge will grow inside an individual, then consume their thoughts and ruin their own anEmily Brontë illustrates this evil force in her novel, “Wuthering Heights” through her characters Heathcliff, Hindley, and other minor characters as their thirst for revenge led them to their own and their victims’ downfalls. Overall, revenge in Wuthering Heights serves for main motivation for the perpetrators, which gives one a sense of reality as both the victims and perpetrators demonstrate the evil actions love, hate, and revenge all intertwined can make. Since the beginning of the novel, Hindley’s thirst for revenge on Heathcliff was sparked on by his father’s favoritism. From the moment, Heathcliff walked in Wuthering Heights, Hindley saw him as an inferior, and grew an immense amount of hate for him. Hindley’s disrespect toward Heathcliff soon led his father to favor his adopted son, which only worsened Hindley’s hate. In fact, Hindley’s envy led him to accuse his father of “treating” Heathcliff “too liberally” and he swore that “he will reduce” Heathcliff “to his right place” (Brontë19). Clearly, Mr.Earnshaw’s favoritism made Hindley bitter, and Hindley began the cycle of revenge in the novel as he swore to lessen Heathcliff’s position in the household. However, eventually Hindley’s misbehavior got him sent away to college, but he comes back when his dad dies to take the opportunity to finally take on his revenge. Hindley first “deprived” Heathcliff from the “instruction of the curate”, and he “insisted that he should labor outdoors instead; compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm” (Brontë 40). By depriving Heathcliff from an education, and lessening him from the privileges Mr. Earnshaw had provided him with, Hindley fulfills his revenge. Hindley took Heathcliff’s status in Wuthering Heights and subjected him to the social class of a servant to satisfy his aching heart broken by his childhood memories of his father’s favoritism. Furthermore, Hindley’s revenge reveals that

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