The article “The Complicated Psychology of Revenge” by Eric Jaffe on APS (Association for Psychological Science) explains in depth the effects of revenge on the avenger and its detrimental aspects using a recent study at the University of Virginia. The whole surmise focuses on the long term effects of revenge and how even Francis Bacon once said “A man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well.” You might as well stick needles into the mental wound.

Getting the Message Across

As the article states,”revenge has generally a low chance of being successful or satisfying for the avenger.” Simply enacting revenge on the offender is very rarely satisfying, there is another important aspect to it as well. It is most satisfying when it is about “delivering a message.” Gollwitzer, the researcher conducting the experiment notes that. “If the message is not delivered, it cannot reestablish justice.” If one were to constantly torment their offender without sending the message they wish to send, it will overtake their mind and have them falling into a dark place.

In “The Scarlet Letter”, Roger Chillingworth constantly sought revenge by tormenting his ex wife’s lover, Dimmesdale. He kept at it because he was not yet satisfied, if he had simply been able to send the message he had been meaning to send, he would have achieved the satisfaction he’d sought. Instead it led him down an unfortunately dark and bottomless hole that led to his death.

Personal Justice

Everybody has their own views on what is fair and what is not, even little children, its what we all seek. The problem is we all have different views on how that should look like. Revenge is centered mostly on seeking justice, in the way the avenger sees fit, against an offender. The article states “Successful revenge appears to make the avengers feel satisfied that equity has been restored, but in many cases the recipient of revenge will perceive the aftermath of revenge as marked by inequity and negative out comes,” It is also important to note that the article goes on to explain how the enacted revenge on the offender usually provokes retaliation and a never ending cycle of revenge but they make sure to specify that it is caused by “Successful” revenge.

Once again, in the “The Scarlet Letter” Roger Chillingworth was not able to enact successful revenge to its fullest extent as previously defined, but at the very end of the story, Dimmesdale learned from Hester, of his motives and the message, although warped, was sent and thus Dimmesdale retaliated by taking away from Roger the ability to enact anymore revenge.Despite Chillingworth’s efforts, Dimmesdale died with a clean conscience.

Evolutionary Forgiveness

Revenge is an ancient basic instinct definitely meant to maintain balance, justice, and societal order at one point in time. It was meant to prevent certain offenses by retaliating against a specific personal one. It is meant to “provide a great cultural benefit — leading to more cooperative, and therefore productive, societies — in exchange for its great personal costs.”Today, in our present modern day society, revenge is unnecessary since we have an established law system meant to discourage offenses before the notion is conceived, we have no need for revenge nowadays and the only thing it causes, more often than not, is crime. Since we have no need of it, it seems that we have evolved in a way where our mind is able to weigh whether it is worth it or not and learn how to forgive. The article states this clearly by saying, “the body may have evolved some type of internal scale that weighs the adaptive benefits of revenge against its various costs”. Usually, forgiveness overrules the mental scale but when it does not, chaos is guaranteed.

There is a connection to this in “The Scarlet Letter”, quite a few characters held onto their definition of revenge and refused to quickly forgive, The whole town of Salem had no business “punishing” Hester for a personal lapse in judgement, yet they were quick to enact revenge (that was not on any national set of rules and laws) for defiling the name of their town. They ended up ruining the life of a young woman, the childhood of a little girl, and a clergyman’s heart. Roger Chillingworth was incapable of forgiving Dimmesdale and he basically dug up his own grave. Revenge led to some dire consequences when it could’ve all led to happily meadows, they all refused to leave their mental caves of restricted thought and dealt with the consequences.

In the end, the urge to enact revenge is definitely a huge problem today, research shows that “revenge has been … a factor in one in five murders that occur in developed countries, and … between 1974 and 2000 three in five school shootings in the United States were driven by vengeance” and the worst part is the psychological dissatisfaction or even regret it causes. Revenge is not always sweet and ends up with the world in chaotic ruins as shown in “The Scarlet Letter”.