How To Handle The Theme Of Revenge In Fiction

Well, I thought that I’d talk about one of the trickiest themes to write well, I am – of course- talking about scenes involving characters taking revenge. This is mostly because several scenes involving this theme have turned up in a few “gritty” films and games I’ve seen recently and it made me think about how to handle this topic.

However, I should probably point out that this article will contain some SPOILERS for “The Warriors”, “Repo Man”, “Saints Row 2”, and Shakespeare’s “Othello”.

In short, there are two main ways of handling the theme of revenge in fiction and whichever one you choose will have a huge effect on your story. Getting this wrong can seriously affect the emotional tone of your story and may produce the opposite effect to the one that you are aiming for.

1) “Cathartic” revenge scenes: These are scenes where the audience is supposed to cheer for the main character as they get their own back against the villain. Usually, these scenes are part of a story’s ending but they can sometimes be a way to add a bit of dark comedy or positive emotion to other parts of the story. However, these scenes need to be handled carefully if you want your audience to keep cheering for the main character.

In short, you need to both establish the evil nature of the villain earlier in the story (typically by them doing something horrible to the main character) and then include a proportionate scene of revenge that makes the main character seem less evil than the villain. This doesn’t mean that the main character has to be a pacifist or a paragon of virtue, but it means that – by the end of the scene – the audience’s sympathies should still lie with the main character, rather than the villain.

In other words, whilst these scenes may be violent, they should never be cruel. Likewise, you also need to make sure that your main character doesn’t act out of character too much. If the scene of revenge feels like “justice” or the quick punchline to a joke, then your audience will probably enjoy it. If it feels cruel, drawn-out or horrifying, then they won’t.

A good example of a well-handled “cathartic” revenge scene can be found in the film “The Warriors”. In this film, the main characters are framed for murder by a villain called Luther who also turns an entire city’s criminal underworld against them too. By the end of the film, one of the main characters wins a duel against Luther – and then a large number of reinforcements show up to get violent revenge against Luther.

This is a “cathartic” scene of revenge because Luther is shown to be an especially heartless and evil villain, because the duel has a “David And Goliath” feeling to it (the main character doesn’t start the fight, he fights fairly and he’s less well-armed than Luther) and – when the reinforcements show up – we never actually see what they do to Luther. This last part is the most crucial because it means that the audience don’t see any horrific scenes of cruelty that might make them feel sorry for Luther.

If you want to play a scene of revenge for dark comedy, then this last point is especially important. For example, in the film “Repo Man”, the main character – Otto – is fired from his job at a supermarket by his rather petty and officious boss. Later on in the film, Otto is beaten up by a group of men after trying to steal someone’s car. When Otto’s rough friends hear about this, they demand that he tells them who was responsible. In a cynically comedic twist, Otto gives them the name of his former boss instead.

This results in a scene of dark comedy – rather than disturbing horror – because of the earlier scene establishing how obnoxious Otto’s boss is and, most crucially, because the scene of Otto’s friends beating up his boss (which is misdirected revenge, but “proportionate” to someone they thought beat Otto up) is kept fairly short. The viewer sees enough to tell what is happening but it isn’t prolonged enough to cross over into the realms of horror or cruelty. This scene is handled more like the punchline to a rather grim joke, rather than as a scene of horrific violence.

So, remember, if you want to make your story’s revenge scene feel cathartic – don’t make your audience feel sorry for the villain!

2) Making a criticism of revenge itself: Perhaps a more intelligent way to handle the theme of revenge is to present it in a critical way, to show that it doesn’t solve anything and/or that it can end up starting a cycle of violence. In these types of stories, uncomfortable depictions of cruel or disproportionate revenge actually serve a crucial dramatic purpose by making the audience question the morality of what is happening.

Some great examples of this can be found in the crime-themed computer game “Saints Row 2”. In this game, a petty dispute between the main character’s gang and another criminal gang called “The Brotherhood” about how to split the profits from a planned heist quickly spirals into an ever more vicious series of tit-for-tat revenge attacks. Although these scenes are presented in a fairly “over the top” kind of way and also include some dark comedy too, the sheer amount of cruelty on both sides – and the trivial reason for these events – means that these parts of the game feel incredibly horrific and uncomfortable to play.

The game also does something vaguely similar in another storyline involving a gang called “The Ronin”. In this part of the game, one of this gang’s henchmen murders a sympathetic character. A bit later on, your character fights and defeats this henchman in a “cathartic” sword-fight. It is a “David and Goliath” battle that really makes the player feel like they have avenged this character’s death. But, in a grim twist, the revenge doesn’t end there. Sometime later in the game, one of the main character’s friends gets some very cruel and drawn-out revenge on the henchman’s boss. Although this scene is presented as “cathartic”, it is very horrifying to watch and also makes a valid moral point about how revenge can easily spiral out of control.

Another way to make your story’s scenes of revenge a moral warning against revenge itself is to include a “serious” scene of misdirected revenge – where a sympathetic character gets revenge, only to find out that they’ve been tricked into harming someone innocent. These scenes serve as a valuable – but horrifying – moral lesson about the dangers of anger and revenge.

The most famous fictional example of this is probably Shakespeare’s “Othello”. In this tragic play, Othello is tricked into thinking that his wife Desdemona has had an affair by his scheming friend Iago. Since the play is set in a more old-fashioned and violent period of history, things don’t exactly end well for poor Desdemona. But, because the audience already knows that Othello has been tricked, the murder at the end of the play is even more grimly tragic and it also serves as a valuable moral lesson about the dangers of anger, violence and revenge.

So, yes, depictions of revenge in fiction don’t have to be “cathartic”. In fact, they can actually be used to make an intelligent moral point when handled correctly.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂