Satisfaction Through Revenge: How Hate Became The Parasite To A Good Heart

By Joslyn McFarlane

No one knows what they are capable of doing until they do it. What pushes us to accomplish these things? The want of a better future? The desire for success? The love of another? All these are all legitimate and motivating reasons, but one thing that pushes someone past their limit and drives a person like no other is hate. Hate will corrupt the heart and cloud our rationality allowing us to do things that we said we would never do in or lifetime. My cousin, Shaun, a straight A student, the president of his class, the co-captain of his track team, the captain of his baseball team and an excellent Call Of Duty player, had the horrific opportunity of seeing his Father killed right in front of his eyes bestowed upon him. An experience such as this devoids ones humanity. After the passing of his father Shaun became distant and he slipped into a chronic depression, one which came to the point that he needed therapy that had to denounce his thoughts of suicide. He was engulfed with sadness and regrets, he spoke of the things he didnt get the chance to do with his father, he recalls the last real conversation he had with his father was an argument of spilled milk. His depression almost got the best of him but eventually he returned back to his normal life, but something wasnt the same. He began to speak of heinous acts such as taking revenge on the man that took his fathers life. Soon he was consumed by revenge; he soon tracked down the man who he believed to his fathers killer and began to secretly stalk him. I tried to deter him from the path of revenge but in vain attempt. He kidnapped the killer, whose named turned out to be Shawn also. Once this information was released to me I tried to convince him to release Shawn but Shaun wouldnt budge. I gave a great dictum saying that killing the man that killed your father wont bring his father back and all it is doing is robbing another child of a father. In the end he was brought back to his senses and he released Shawn. After the incident Shaun was charged with kidnapping and was sentenced to 10 years with parole. He was released after 7 years with good behavior. He is now a successful electrician and he coaches his community baseball team and is an upright citizen in his community. He now married and has three kids of his own. He has learned from this traumatic and jeopardizing experience that almost put an end to someones life. This was my experience with my cousins quest for revenge. My cousin was psychologically traumatized after the killing of his father. Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster. (Trauma, ada.org) The event that caused this trauma was the death of his father and the witnessing of it. Shaun was subject to therapy after the traumatic experience which seemed to help him control his emotions. Wrong. Hate was actually controlling him, ruling over his life. With hate as his blindfold, Shaun threatened another humans life almost taking someones brother, father, and husband. A life for a life never works out, because then it would be a never ending cycle, a cycle that would yield no benefits and sentence the world to a never ending demise. After reading the novel Night by Elie Wiesel I was touched deeply by its message and moral. The novel is a memoir of the period of Elie Wiesels life during World War II as a

displaced Hungarian Jew. He lived in Sighet a small town close to Transylvania in Romania. As a Jew in that time period he faced many obstacles. Once, the Hungarian police, who arrived in the name of the German army, arrived they placed all the Jews in ghettos. Elie and his family were placed in the smaller of two ghettos that were created in that area. Later on they were transferred to the bigger ghetto. After that they were transferred to Auschwitz, a concentration camp located in Poland. They were transported there in small cramped cattle cars. A majority of the memoir takes place on the compound of Auschwitz, as he is moved from camp to camp. He experiences this life of misery, torture and hell with his father who he tries his best to not be separated with. In the end of the memoir he is set free and it is the end of the holocaust. In the Night many themes can be identified but the one that stands out is being blinded by emotion, more specifically hate. Throughout the story it is evident who is blinded by hate, that person being Adolf Hitler, the evil dictator of Germany at the moment, the executor of the Holocaust, the one who thought it would be a great idea to kill over 6 million people. People who were wives, mothers, son, daughters, fathers, husbands and someones everything. Adolf Hitler, being blinded by hate thought this was a magnificent idea. In Night the holocaust was described as a long road of suffering (Night, 39) The Jews were put to work in concentration camps and they yielded nothing from all their work. Adolf Hitler was blinded by his hate for the Jewish people and killed 6 million Jews and other minorities and homosexuals. Just as Hitler was blinded by hate so was my cousin, Shaun blinded by his hate for the man that killed his father that he didnt realize that killing that man would be killing someone elses father and it would not be a pleasurable outcome for him. But he gladly he was stopped in his tracks and turned his life around before he did that heinous act or taking a life. In the end we should all be open-minded and not be blinded by imperfections within ourselves and let us show compassion for all even the ones who hate us.

Works Cited American Psychological Association.