How Is Heathcliff A Destructive Force Of Revenge

During reading Wuthering Heights, there are many apparent recurring themes with one being cruelty between many of the characters. This type of abuse is most of the time occurring due to a character wanting to get revenge on another whether it’d be because of rivalry, broken hearts, or the effect of someone betraying another.

One of the strongest yet most broken types of people in this world are orphans, the ones who grew up without parents to teach the ways of the world to them. Very few are so lucky to find families of their own, and when they do, they are incredibly improved or perilously worse. In the case of Wuthering Heights, the unfortunate orphan is the character, Heathcliff. Growing up, he was treated with respect and care from his father, Mr. Earnshaw, like he was his own son, and later was treated like a close friend by his adoptive sister and love interest, Catherine. However, his adoptive brother, Hindley, was nothing but discourteous, derogatory, and ghastly towards him. Upon being bequeathed the mansion and the treasures from his father, Hindley immediately began to treat Heathcliff as nothing more than a gypsy and a stable boy; no respect, no care, and no love. Heathcliff’s character style is very static. Regardless of being raised by a father who cared for him, he was always

In the story Heathcliff is a pretty significant character. He is brought in by Mr. Earnshaw as an orphan and is treated well by him. He then starts to fall in love with Mr. Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine that lasts the whole story. However, when Mr. Earnshaw dies, his son Hindley becomes in charge of the house basically treats Heathcliff as a servant, he constantly looks down at him as if he is useless. So, in the beginning of the story when Heathcliff is first introduced as a dirty orphan who is taken in by Mr. Earnshaw who is instantly hated by Hindley because he feels his father loves Heathcliff more than himself. This results in Hindley bullying Heathcliff as a child and when Mr. Earnshaw dies and he becomes in charge to remember to flog him. At this point in the story and the first transformation of Heathcliff he goes from being an orphan to being hated by Hindley and becoming his human punching bag. The interesting thing about this is that Heathcliff just takes it he never really fights back or tell Mr. Earnshaw he just gets up and goes about his business not even acknowledging that it happened.

The only consolation for him is the friendship and love of Catherine for him. However, when Heathcliff hears Catherine saying that ‘’it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff, he feels distracted, broken inside, because the only one who he thought loved him, betrays him. These words he heard from Catherine, turns him into a wild beast, filled with anger and resentment and he runs away and disappears for about three years after hearing that. He comes back at Wuthering Heights, now rich and well educated, only to take revenge on those who treated him ill and degraded him. His actions, starting those towards Hindley, seem to go beyond capability of a normal person. Resentment, hate and his ill-consciousness have occupied his mind and spirit. He is now transformed into an evil, whose deeds not only destroy his own soul, but also other people’s life. However, the readers, get to know through carefully analyzing the behaviors of characters, that Heathcliff does not seem to be ‘’the worst’’ among the other characters of this

Hindley first became an abusive character when his father, Mr. Earnshaw, brought a homeless boy home from his trip to Liverpool and named him Heathcliff (Chapter 4, pp. 33-39). One of the reasons why Hindley grew hostile towards Heathcliff

Most people think that love is the main theme, but that is not the case; In the novel Wuthering Heights, revenge is the main motive for all of the actions in the book because it is present in all of the choices,

Revenge is one of the most prominent themes in Wuthering Heights. At times throughout the novel, it seems to overpower the theme of love. Heathcliff’s desire for revenge arises from Catherine’s betrayal. He has been in love with her for a long time, and she loves him. However, she betrays him and marries Edgar for his money. This action leaves Heathcliff alone and isolated, only to long for her love again. "I seek no revenge on you, that 's not the plan. The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don 't turn against him; they crush those beneath them" (Bronte, p. 103). This quote shows that Heathcliff is not trying to get revenge on Catherine. Although she turned against him, he cannot do the same to her. “I 'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don 't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!” (Bronte p. 54). When he cannot have the woman he loves, he turns his attention to revenging Hindley, his childhood

It is displayed in Wuthering Heights that people seek revenge upon those who have wronged them. After being rejected and hurt by many people, the main character, Heathcliff, seeks revenge on people most of his life. However, all of the revenge does not solve his actual problems; it merely makes him a darker person. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights reveals that, though revenge is satisfying for a short time, it does not solve one’s true dilemmas.

Heathcliff’s love for Catherine makes him destructive as he manages to inflict part of his vengeance onto her daughter. The young Cathy is first physically constrained of her freedom, then stripped of her financial and ownership of property by Heathcliff. “He opened them suddenly, and resigned the object of dispute; but, ere she had well secured it, he seized her with the liberated hand, and, pulling her on his knee, administrated with the other a shower of terrace slaps on both sides of the head, each sufficient to have filled his threat, had she been able to fall” (Bronte 265). Heathcliff’s tyrannical traits for his greed and power seeking appetite has reached a point of total insanity that all other characters suffer, as if he wants all to feel the same pain he has experienced. The author show cases raw emotions of human nature that also draws a small parallelism to animalistic features when it comes to the characterization of Heathcliff in the second half of the novel.

Wuthering Heights strongly acknowledges the affects of revenge and repetition; all the characters are affected by each other’s decisions. Hindley uses his unconscious mind, as he is frustrated with Heathcliff for coming to Wuthering Heights; therefore Hindley denies Heathcliff an education and manages to separate Catherine and Heathcliff. Heathcliff proceeds using his conscious mind, has an unquenchable thirst to get revenge on Hindley; Heathcliff then denies education to Hindley’s son Hareton and gets Hindley removed from Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff uses his ideas of right from wrong to plan revenge to Edgar for marrying Catherine; the characters in the novel display a domino affect as they plot their revenge on each other.

Furthermore, Hindley actively seeks revenge on Heathcliff by revoking education and transforms him into a monstrous and relentless character. With Hindley’s constant torment, the reasons of Heathcliff’s ‘why’ for all of his actions and pursuits begin to appear. Hindley lives in a stage of fire burning rage with no water in sight for recover nor peace. The root of his revenge is based because his father no longer uses his attention Hindley to be a main focus. Mr. Earnshaw demanded that Heathcliff must be treated with respect because it made, “This endurance made old Earnshaw furious when he discovered his son [Hindley] persecuting the poor, fatherless child” (Bronte 38).

Since the beginning of the novel, Hindley’s thirst for revenge on Heathcliff was sparked on by his father’s favoritism. From the moment, Heathcliff walked in Wuthering Heights, Hindley saw him as an inferior, and grew an immense amount of hate for him. Hindley’s disrespect toward Heathcliff soon led his father to favor his adopted son, which only worsened Hindley’s hate. In fact, Hindley’s envy led him to accuse his father of “treating” Heathcliff “too liberally” and he swore that “he will reduce” Heathcliff “to his right place” (Brontë19). Clearly, Mr.Earnshaw’s favoritism made Hindley bitter, and Hindley began the cycle of revenge in the novel as he swore to lessen Heathcliff’s position in the household. However, eventually Hindley’s misbehavior got him sent away to college, but he comes back when his dad dies to take the opportunity to finally take on his revenge. Hindley first “deprived” Heathcliff from the “instruction of the curate”, and he “insisted that he should labor outdoors instead; compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm” (Brontë 40). By depriving Heathcliff from an education, and lessening him from the privileges Mr. Earnshaw had provided him with, Hindley fulfills his revenge. Hindley took Heathcliff’s status in Wuthering Heights and subjected him to the social class of a servant to satisfy his aching heart broken by his childhood memories of his father’s favoritism. Furthermore, Hindley’s revenge reveals that

Perhaps the biggest factor to consider when exploring what makes Heathcliff a villain is his childhood. As an orphan, the boy was brought into the Earnshaw family by its well-meaning patriarch, Mr. Earnshaw. Heathcliff soon becomes preferred over the Earnshaw’s biological son, Hindley, by Mr. Earnshaw himself and his young daughter, Cathy, but never successfully assimilates into the family or society. Hindley, threatened by his own father favoring the scruffy outsider over himself, takes his anger out on the younger boy. His abuse of Heathcliff is at first only physical,

In Wuthering Heights, Bronte develops the character, Heathcliff a young man, who was driven into hatred, and wishes to seek revenge on those who treated him poorly. At the beginning of the novel, it starts with Mr. Earnshaw entering Wuthering Heights with an orphan boy who he found in the streets of Liverpool. Soon, Mr. Earnshaw names the orphan Heathcliff. Heathcliff became part of the Earnshaw family as well as one of the favorites sons. There he became good friends with Catherine Earnshaw however, one of the members of the family was not so pleased to live with Heathcliff in the same house. This character was Hindley, who thought of Heathcliff as someone lower that him, a bastard who belongs with the help. Later on Hindley is sent away for school, and after the death of his father he returns back home with a wife Frances. There, Hindley is decided to make Heathcliff’s life impossible, he is treated as a slave, and is told to act as one of the servants. Heathcliff says "I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed, and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!"(Bronte pp. 50.) After a while, Heathcliff decides to leave everything behind, including his beloved Catherine. Years pass, and he returns as a refined man that wants to destroy Hindley’s happiness by talking

The prime theme of Wuthering Heights may be stated as the love of Heathcliff for Catherine and the revenge that he takes upon various individuals, the revenge being evoked by the social contempt or disdain piled upon him by Hindley and Edgar and the frustration of his love. Hindley had a superior attitude towards Heathcliff from the time Heathcliff was brought as a boy to Wuthering Heights. He treated Heathcliff ruthlessly and made him work on the fields like other servants.While Edgar is his rival in love, and a successful rival as Catherine has married him in preference to Heathcliff. Wuthering Heights has a gripping plot with many dramatic situations which arouse feelings of pity or awe or fear