Revenge, at the time, can feel like the most wonderful thing in the world. It may give one a sense of satisfaction that nothing else may give, for one may feel he has righted a wrong done against him or his family. In Emily Bronte's book Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is a character who takes vengeance to the extreme, allowing the revenge to fall not only upon those who he feels have wronged him, but on their children as well. .
While on a trip one week, Mr. Earnshaw, father to Hindley and Catherine, brings home to Wuthering Heights a young boy who, he says, was out on the street with no place to go and no parents. He raises the child as his own for a few years, favoring Heathcliff, as he calls the boy, over his son. Though Mr. Earnshaw's daughter Catherine gets along well with the boy, Hindley hates him.
Our first example of Heathcliff's revenge is upon Hindley Earnshaw, when both were mere children. Hindley, a few years older than Heathcliff, didn't like Heathcliff, and would beat him, sometimes for no reason. One day Hindley's father bought Hindley and Heathcliff each a colt. Heathcliff chose the more beautiful of the horses, but his soon became ill. Young Heathcliff blackmailed Hindley into exchanging horses with him, threatening to tell Mr. Earnshaw of the beatings Hindley had given him, telling him that his father would return the beatings, "with interest". (35).
After the death of Mr. Earnshaw many years later, Hindley takes over Wuthering Heights. Since he despises Heathcliff, he makes Heathcliff live as a servant, and separates him from Catherine, sending her to play with the neighbor's children, Edgar and Isabella Linton. Heathcliff runs away a few years later, after hearing that Catherine is going to marry someone else and later returns to avenge what wrongs he thinks have been done to him. One of the first he sets his sights on is Hindley, who, since the death of his wife during the birth of their son Hareton, has become a miserable creature.
