Poetic justice

For other uses, see Poetic justice (disambiguation).

Poetic justice is a literary device in which ultimately virtue is rewarded and vice punished. In modern literature it is often accompanied by an ironic twist of fate related to the character's own action.^[1]

Origin of the term

English drama critic Thomas Rymer coined the phrase in The Tragedies of the Last Age Considere'd (1678) to describe how a work should inspire proper moral behaviour in its audience by illustrating the triumph of good over evil. The demand for poetic justice is consistent in Classical authorities and shows up in Horace, Plutarch, and Quintillian, so Rymer's phrasing is a reflection of a commonplace. Philip Sidney, in Defense of Poetry, argued that poetic justice was, in fact, the reason that fiction should be allowed in a civilized nation.

History of the notion

Notably, poetic justice does not merely require that vice be punished and virtue rewarded, but also that logic triumph. If, for example, a character is dominated by greed for most of a romance or drama; he cannot become generous. The action of a play, poem, or fiction must obey the rules of logic as well as morality. During the late 17th century, critics pursuing a neo-classical standard would criticize William Shakespeare in favor of Ben Jonson precisely on the grounds that Shakespeare's characters change during the course of the play. (See Shakespeare's reputation for more on the Shakespeare/Jonson dichotomy.) When Restoration comedy, in particular, flouted poetic justice by rewarding libertines and punishing dull-witted moralists, there was a backlash in favor of drama, in particular, of more strict moral correspondence.

Examples

Literature

It Shoots Further Than He Dreams by John F. Knott, March 1918

"For 'tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard." (Shakespeare, Hamlet (III.iv.226).)
The story of Esther includes two instances of poetic justice, both involving Haman. Ultimately, Haman is executed on the gallows that he had prepared for Esther's cousin Mordecai.
Dante's Divine Comedy reads like a compendium of examples of poetic justice.
The self-fulfilling prophecy can be considered an early example of poetic justice. One example of this is the ancient Sanskrit story of Krishna, where King Kamsa is told in a prophecy that a child of his sister Devaki would kill him. In order to prevent it, he imprisons both Devaki and her husband Vasudeva, allowing them to live only if they hand over their children as soon as they are born. He murders nearly all of them one by one, but the eighth child, Krishna, is saved and raised by a cowherd couple, Nanda and Yasoda. After growing up and returning to his kingdom, Krishna eventually kills Kamsa. In other words, Kamsa's cruelty in order to prevent his death is what led to him being killed.
Toward the conclusion of the popular Hunger Games series, President Snow is set to be publicly put to death, just as he publicly destroyed so many of his citizens.^[2]

Television and film

"The Shawshank Redemption"
In the South Park episode "Chicken Lover", Kyle declares, "It's poetic justice" after Officer Barbrady gets his job back as Police Officer once he learns to read. It's poetic justice in that he learned to read because of the Booktastic Bus driver, who was making love to the town's chickens in a plot to force Barbrady to learn how to read. Barbrady's newfound literacy then allowed him to catch the very same chicken-lover in the act.
The Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons feature repeated instances of poetic justice, as Wile E. Coyote always sets traps for Road Runner, only to end up in the traps himself.
Poetic justice is referred to in The Simpsons episode "Boy Scoutz N the Hood." When Bart returns home from a Junior Campers meeting Homer asks "How was jerk practice, boy? Did they teach you how to sing to trees and build crappy furniture out of useless wooden logs?" The chair that Homer is sitting on then breaks and he declares "D'oh! Stupid poetic justice."
In the film Batman Returns, The Penguin informs his traitorous cohort Max Shreck, that he will be killed in a pool of the toxic byproducts from his "clean" textile plant. The Penguin goes on to wonder if this is tragic irony or poetic justice.
In the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy's love interest Dr. Elsa Schneider is a Nazi agent. After this revelation, she tries fooling Indy and others saying, "I believe in the grail, not the swastika." Yet, she continues working with the Nazis and Walter Donovan. She tricks Donovan into drinking from the false grail and he dies a horrible death. In the end, poetic justice comes in the form of her death. She tries stealing the grail and triggers an earthquake. Indy grabs her hand before she falls into a bottomless pit. Yet, her greed overcomes her and she reaches for the grail again, causing Indy to lose his grip on her. Indy's father, Henry Jones Sr., sums her death up, saying, "Elsa never really believed in the grail. She thought she found a prize."
Disney films, most specifically animated films, often use poetic justice as an ending device (examples include The Lion King, Aladdin, and The Great Mouse Detective, among many others), with the hero being rewarded, and the villain being punished in ironic and, occasionally, fatal ways.
In the film, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, as well as in the short story and the musical, the titular character, Sweeney Todd, kills his customers with a razor blade. In a twist of the story, at the end, having assassinated the Judge and the Beadle, Todd is killed by Toby, a boy he kept with Mrs. Lovett, with his own razor blade, while Mrs. Lovett, who bakes the dead customers into meat pies, is thrown into her own oven to bake to death by Todd.
In the film Back to the Future Part II, when Marty McFly is on the roof top of Biff's Casino & Hotel, Biff issues a nod to poetic justice before admitting to killing Marty's father, George McFly, with the same gun he intends to kill Marty with.
Some caper films end with poetic justice, when a criminal gang's takings of a well planned heist are lost in a manner that is usually not quite their own fault, in complete opposition to the perfect execution of the crime itself. A striking example are the last minutes of Mélodie en sous-sol or the original versions of Ocean's Eleven and The Italian Job.
In the television series Avatar: The Last Airbender, several characters find poetic justice. This is most noticeable in the episode "The Southern Raiders", in which a Fire Nation soldier who killed Katara and Sokka's mother lives with his own mother in retirement, who is angry and constantly berating and talking down to him. The man killed Katara's mother, believing she was the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe, when she really lied to protect Katara.
In the film Cruel Intentions, Kathryn, who has been holding up an image of purity, innocence, and popularity while actually being manipulative, deceitful, and two-faced, is exposed at the end of the film due to the diary of her stepbrother Sebastian, who had just recently died.
In the film The Killing, after a very carefully planned—and at first successful robbery—a series of unexpected side events (an unfaithful and greedy wife, a too weak suitcase...) results in most of the gang killed, and the money scattered by the wind at the airport. This causes the mastermind to be arrested just when he was about to flee the country.
In The X-Files episode "Darkness Falls," Mulder theorizes that a group of missing loggers are victims of attacks by extinct insects released from dormancy when the loggers cut down a 700-year-old tree. An environmental activist named Doug Spinney, who previously exposed the cut-down tree as one deliberately marked to be protected, then remarks, "That would be rather poetic justice, don't you think? Unleashing the very thing that would end up killing them?"
In a scene in The Birdcage, it is revealed that a senator who co-founded a morality-obsessed coalition has been found dead with an underage prostitute.
Many episodes of The Twilight Zone feature poetic justice, usually due to an ironic twist.
In Marvel's The Avengers, the Hulk smashing Loki falls under poetic justice, as throughout the movie he continuously refers to him as a "mindless beast" and a "dull creature" while simultaneously believing in his own divinity.
In Untraceable, Owen Reilly murdered his victims on camera and display it on the internet; however, his death was caught on camera and being shown all over the internet, it became poetic justice.
In Unfriended, the movie's main tragic antagonist, Laura, commits suicide on camera due to extensive bullying. Her vengeful spirit then hunts down and murders those responsible for her death, with all of the deaths caught on live feeds.

References

↑ Manuela Gertz (July 2010). Poetic Justice in William Faulkner's Absalom Absalom. GRIN Verlag. p. 4–. ISBN 978-3-640-66116-9. Retrieved 20 May 2013.
↑ "Common Literary Techniques". Antioch University. Retrieved 24 February 2016.