One of my favorite themes is revenge. There’s something incomparably satisfying about a person getting even with the one who wronged him.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Hop Frog is a great revenge story. It delivers the expected appalling behavior of hateful tormentors and the pleasure of the victim getting even, but it also raises interesting questions.
In the story, a crippled court jester and a charming dancer suffer at the hands of a boorish king and his ministers. Hop Frog and Trippetta were abducted and delivered to the king for his entertainment. After years of bearing the brunt of the king’s mocking sense of humor, Hop Frog is pushed past his limits when Trippetta is abused by the king.
Hop Frog plans a most violent revenge and makes his escape with the dancer.
It’s easy to hate the king and his ministers, but is the extreme revenge taken by Hop Frog justified? If the jester managed to escape after seeking retribution, could he not have done so before?
I can’t deny that I felt an almost sick satisfaction when the king received his payback, yet as with any good horror story, it left me uncomfortable as well. This story begs the question how did the circumstances of their escape affect Hop Frog and Trippetta? Was Hop Frog’s act of violence a one time occurrence, incited by years of suffering, or was it the first of other brutal acts to come?
What do you think? In this story are justice and revenge the same, or is Hop Frog’s act more one than the other?