Revenge Literature: Aping the Ape
In an interview from 2020, novelist Alexander Theroux opines that “writing itself is in a very real sense about revenge,” and that “to take on the subject of love as a theme in a book, one cannot avoid the ancillary themes of jealousy, disappointment, and revenge.” Theroux goes on to list some of the many works that focus on revenge, including Moby Dick, Wuthering Heights, Les Miserables, and A Tale of Two Cities. Theroux’s words got me thinking about revenge, in both literature and life.
One might say that the opening drama of Scripture is all about revenge. My parish priest recently gave a homily reminding his parishioners that before God created the material world, including Adam and Eve, he created angels, among them Lucifer. Lucifer fell, rejecting obedience to God, and along with his cohort was thrust from Heaven by Michael the Archangel. We aren’t privy to this history in Genesis. Instead, the first we encounter Lucifer is as a serpent, tempting Eve. Why does he tempt Eve? What could he possibly have against this unblemished creature?
As Rene Girard writes, Lucifer is the “ape of God,” who “sustains himself as a parasite on what God creates by imitating God in a manner that is jealous, grotesque, perverse, and as contrary as possible to the upright and obedient imitation of Jesus.” Lucifer, the ape of God, recognizes Eve’s beauty and her communion with God. Rather than participate in creation and the fulfillment of God’s plan for Adam and Eve, Lucifer seeks destruction.
What Lucifer has against Adam and Eve, then, is revenge. Hatred of God. And thereby hatred of humankind. One could understandably read the entire war that Lucifer and his fallen angels wage against humanity as a war of revenge against God, Lucifer’s creator. Lucifer, as Aquinas teaches, is unrepentant and incapable of repenting, perpetually locked in his own misery and disobedience, foolishly desiring to get back at God by turning His beloved creatures against Him, by aping God’s creation with destruction.
To ape Satan, then, is to ape the ape. This is what happens to Cain. Why does Cain kill Abel? It does not appear that Abel has done Cain any ill, yet Cain was “very angry” that Abel’s sacrifice was accepted, and his was not. In a dual-act of revenge, Cain rose up against his brother and killed him. I say dual-act, because Cain appears to be seeking revenge both against God, who had no regard for his offering, and against Abel, who Cain both envies and hates.
Cain and Abel by Titian, 1542-44
Yes, revenge is a powerful motivation. So powerful, in fact, that the Minnesota Legislature deemed it necessary to recently enact “revenge porn legislation.” The impetus for the law was the prevalence of spurned lovers sharing nude images of their former significant others against that person’s wishes. A rather base form of revenge indeed, but unfortunately all too common.
Revenge seems built-in to the human condition. Just watch any child in a toy room or on a playground. The bloodthirst is strong. And that desire to pull someone’s hair because he pulled mine can quickly spiral into more deviant behavior, as I witnessed as a juvenile prosecutor, observing adolescents shoot and kill other adolescents to settle a “gang” score, or simply because of miniscule social media slights. (As I finished up this essay, I realized that I had engaged in a bit of scapegoating. How easy to say children and juvenile delinquents are vengeance seekers, and to say nothing of me. Well here goes. I am a vengeance seeker; case in point, after a recent conversation with a friend that didn’t quite go as hoped, I found myself interiorly shouting along with Balzac’s creation, Lucien, revenge! Yes, the desire for revenge is strong, both for petty slights and large ones).
Though the impetus for revenge is strong, so too is its destructive power, as witnessed in Andre Dubus’s masterful story “Killings.” Matt and Ruth Fowler’s son, Frank, has been murdered by Richard Strout. The motive? Revenge. Frank had begun dating Richard’s ex-wife. Richard is charged with the crime, but posts bail while awaiting trial. Matt’s own grief and desire for revenge consumes him, spurred on by witnessing Richard walking freely about town. Matt and a friend kidnap Richard and take him to the woods where they shoot and bury him. Matt has committed the perfect crime. All evidence has been destroyed. The body will never be found. Police will think Richard has jumped bail. If ever there was cathartic revenge, revenge that healed and nourished, this should be it. But of course, revenge never works like that. To ape the ape is only to bring misery, ruin, and icy sadness upon yourself. The story ends with Matt shuddering “with a sob that he kept silent in his heart.”
But revenge need not be consummated. The desire to reclaim what has been taken can be redeemed. Redeemed by what? An act of forgiveness. This is the wonderful heart of Frederick Manfred’s Lord Grizzly. Mountain man and fur trapper Hugh Glass is mauled by an enormous grizzly bear and left for dead by his companions, Jim Bridger and John Fitzpatrick. But by some miraculous act of God, or by sheer grit and determination, or a combination of both, Hugh does not die. Instead, grievously wounded, Hugh crawls and limps some 200-plus miles back to Fort Kiowa, brooding for revenge the entire way. But when he finally finds the men and has the opportunity to enact revenge, he doesn’t. Instead, he forgives them; he has compassion on them. Why? Because while he was meditating on the revenge he desired, he was also reminded of his own sin; especially, his desertion of his wife and two sons:
Deserted them, that’s what he’d done. What a miserable coward he was. Maybe Mabel was a rakehellion she-rip, ae, but the boys were still his boys, of his own flesh and blood, that’s a fact, and good boys too, boys who deserved to have a father.
Hugh realizes that the evil he perceived in Jim and John was his own evil. And that revenge would only be further betrayal; only forgiveness could heal the past.
Lord Grizzly explores the redemptive power of forgiveness; the healing power of rejecting the ape. Of course, the consummate witness of turning revenge on itself is Jesus Himself, who, while hanging on the cross, beholding his tormenters and accusers and the disciples who forsook him, and who of all people had the power to enact swift revenge, instead prays Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
Perhaps Theroux is right. Perhaps to take on the subject of love as a theme in a book, one cannot avoid themes of jealousy and revenge. Human motivation is mixed. Human desire fractured by The Fall. But ever the choice lies open to us: to either ape the ape and have our sobs, like Matt’s, choked in our throats (or our tears frozen on our eyelids), or to imitate He alone who shattered the endless cycle of jealousy, bitterness, and revenge, and forgave us our trespasses.
