Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge

by Susan Jacoby

Traces the history of Western attitudes towards revenge and justice, looks at sexual revenge, capital punishment, and the U.S. criminal justice system, and considers the portrayal of revenge in popular novels and movies

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Susan Jacoby is an independent scholar and best-selling author. The most recent of her seven previous books is The Age of American Unreason. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[J.D. Steens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jacoby sets the stage well for her topic in Chapter One where she describes the tension between revenge and all of its variations and society's role in containing it "in a manner consistent with the maintenance of our orderly and human society." Jacoby argues that we make a mistake if we deny (by treating it as taboo and burying it with euphemistic names) the underlying reality that constitutes revenge. If we go too far in that direction, we risk losing that essential middle ground between the subjective need for vengeance and the objective need for social order. That middle ground is viable only when society is responsive to victims by acting "on their behalf against the victimizers." Rules that define the right balance are not locked down, but result from a dynamic tension whereby each society defines where that line is to be drawn.

The rest of this book is a history of revenge as revealed in such arenas as literature, sexual relationships, and the criminal system. Unfortunately, despite the promising title, there's no discussion of an evolutionary explanation for revenge and its relationship to, say, freedom, equality, power, self-interest, respect, fairness and these, collectively, to "wild justice."

[Kim Dichoso]

i need this