The Wisdom of Revenge: Season One

Revenge thus follows the saga of Emily Thorne as she returns to the Southamptons of her youth in order to enact vengeance against the handful of conspirators responsible for the false imprisonment and eventual death of her father. Although part modern update of the classic literary work The Count of Monte Cristo and part contemporary soap opera, the series likewise contains examinations of various human emotions and actions as a full range of devious undertakings become enmeshed within the narrative. Greed, ambition, blackmail and betrayal go side-by-side with revenge in Revenge, and Emily Thorne offers miniature soliloquies on the various themes of each installment. Taken together, these quotes form a wisdom not only forged by vengeance but by trust, loyalty, friendship and perception as well.

Some of these observations include:

“Trust is a difficult thing, whether it’s finding the right people to trust or trusting the right people will do the wrong thing. But trusting your heart is the riskiest thing of all. In the end, the only person you can truly trust is ourself.”

“The greatest weapon anyone can use against us is our own mind, by preying on the doubts and uncertainties that already lurk there. Are we true to ourselves, or do we live for the expectations of others? And if we are open and honest, can we ever truly be loved? Can we find the courage to release our deepest secrets, or in the end, are we all unknowable? Even to ourselves.”

“Guilt is a powerful affliction. You can try to turn your back on it but that’s when it sneaks up behind you and eats you alive. Some people struggle to understand their own guilt, unwilling or unable to justify the part they play in it. Others run away from their guilt, shedding their conscious until there’s no conscious left at all. But I run toward my guilt. I feed off of it. I need it. For me, guilt is one of the few lanterns that light my way.”

“As Hamlet said to Ophelia, ‘God has given me one face and you make yourself another.’ The battle between these two halves of identity—who we are and who we pretend to be—is unwinnable.”

“Just as there are two sides to every story, there are two sides to every person. One that we reveal to the world and another we keep hidden inside. A duality governed by the balance of light and darkness. Within each of us is the capacity for both good and evil, but those who are able to blur the moral dividing line hold the true power.”

“There’s an old saying about those who can’t remember the past being condemned to repeat it. But those of us who refuse to forget the past are condemned to relive it.”

“We all have secrets we keep locked away from the rest of the world. Friendships we pretend, relationships we hide. But worst of all is the love we never let show. The most dangerous secrets a person can bury are those we keep from ourselves.”

“My father wrote, ‘Always question where your loyalties lie.’ The people you trust will expect it, your greatest enemies will desire it, and those you treasure the most will without fail abuse it. Some say loyalty inspires boundless hope and while that may be, there is a catch. True loyalty takes years to build and only seconds to destroy.”

“Some say our lives are defined by the sum of our choices, but it isn’t really our choices that distinguish who we are—it’s our commitment to them.”

“For some, commitment is like faith. A chosen devotion to another person or an intangible ideal. But for me, commitment has a shadow side, a darker drive that constantly asks the question, ‘How far am I willing to go?’”

“Years ago, I met a boy who introduced me to a book, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In it, William Blake writes, ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as infinite.’ But in reality our perception is often clouded by expectations. By experiences. As of late I find my perception is blinded by only one thing—revenge.”

“Truth is a battle of perceptions. People only see what they’re prepared to confront. It’s not what you look at that matters but what you see. And when different perceptions battle against one another, the truth has a way of getting lost. And the monsters find a way of getting out.”

“My father’s false imprisonment taught me that in a crisis, you quickly find out who your real friends are. Tragedy and scandal, it seems, have a unique way of clarifying people’s priorities.”

“Loyalties forged in apprehension and mistrust are tenuous at best, easily broken when held up to the unforgiving light of the truth. But in the darkness of our most desperate hours, it’s often these loyalties that lend us the strength to do what we know must be done.”

“A conflicted heart feeds on doubt, confusion. It will make you question your path. Your tactics. Your motives. When you stare ahead and darkness is all you see, only reason and determination can pull you back from the abyss.”

“Doubt is a disease. It infects the mind, creating a mistrust of people’s motives and of one’s own perceptions. Doubt has the ability to call into question everything you ever believed about someone, and reinforce the darkest suspicions of our inner circles.”

“In society, women are referred to as the fairer sex. But in the wild, the female species can be far more ferocious than their male counterparts. Defending the nest is both our oldest and strongest instinct. And sometimes it can also be the most gratifying.”

“Clarence Darrow, one of history’s greatest lawyers, once noted, ‘There is no such thing as justice, in or out of court.’ Perhaps because justice is a flawed concept that ultimately comes down to the decision of twelve people. People with their own experiences, prejudices. Feelings about what defines right and wrong. Which is why, when the system fails us, we must go out and seek our own justice.”

“Absolution is the washing away of sin, a promise of rebirth and a chance to escape the transgressions of those who came before us. The best among us will learn from the mistakes of the past, while the rest seem doomed to repeat them. And then there are those that operate on the fringes of society, unburdened by the confines of morality and conscience. A ruthless breed of monsters whose greatest weapon is the ability to hide in plain sight. If the people I’ve come to bring justice to cannot be bound by the quest for absolution, then neither will I.”

“They say grief occurs in five stages. First, there’s denial, followed by anger. Then comes bargaining, depression and acceptance. But grief is a merciless master. Just when you think you’re free, you realize you never stood a chance.”

As Emily Thorne states at the beginning of the pilot episode of Revenge, the ABC drama is not a story about forgiveness. The narrative instead contains a full-range of emotions and moral dilemmas, with revenge itself being only one amongst many. “They say vengeance taken will tear the heart and torment the conscience,” she states early on, and the subsequent installments reflect that internal conflict as Emily Thorne is continually faced with new obstacles while on her personal path of vengeance. The lessons she learns on the way may not always be pragmatic, but there is wisdom to be gained from her fortune cookie-like pronouncements nonetheless.

Anthony Letizia (July 4, 2012)

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