Disproportionate Retribution/Literature: Difference between revisions

*** One should keep in mind his actual crime, he broke glass (back when it was probably worth hundreds or thousands of times the value of the bread), was armed, and robbed an occupied residence. Which is an easy felony (actually multiple felonies) that will put you away for a long time under the American legal system. With escape attempts using violence and fleeing a felony, and resisting recapture, it is entirely likely he would never get out under, say the American common law legal system. Not of hard labor of course, but still...

**** Of course, his number of escape attempts had a lot to do with the horrific prison conditions, which complicates the issue of Valjean's sentence then versus now.

** The Redwaller kids point out immediately afterwards that Asmodeus's poison corrupted his mind and made him go batshit crazy into ''thinking'' that the Redwallers were responsible, even though he decided to steal everything valuable in the abbey after they'd saved him from death.

* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' has a number of examples. Gregor Clegane typically crushes anything that so much as annoys him. He most notably held his little brother's face to a burning brazier for playing with one of his old toys, scarring him for life. Petyr Baelish's kingdom-conquering is mostly due to a grudge he nurses from being rejected by his childhood sweetheart for a wealthier and more dashing man. Tywin Lannister is well known for his harsh retribution. A popular song, "The Rains of Castamere" was written about how he completely wiped out two noble houses for being disloyal. The Freys have possibly the most shocking example: {{spoiler|After Robb Stark reneges on his wedding promise to House Frey, Lord Walder massacres Robb, his mother, most of his noble bannermen, and most of his army at the wedding feast of his uncle, thereafter called The Red Wedding.}} Joffrey Baratheon/Lannister is also know for this trope, typically cutting everybody's heads off for any act of defiance or making them duel to the death. He once even almost executed a person for getting a little bit too drunk and dishonouring himself in a tourney.

* The ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series sees a man being [[Cold-Blooded Torture|tortured]] by a [[The Baroness|Mord-Sith]] after he assassinates a mage in the opposing army (after stabbing a little girl; the girl survives, the mage doesn't). Surprisingly, the torturers are the heroes. After the man has spilled all his information, the mage's lover orders him to be tortured to death as slowly as possible, in retaliation for being so cocky when he was captured.

** In the first book, the staff taking care of the tomb of Darken Rahl's father were executed if a single petal fell off the flowers there or a single torch went out in Rahl's presence. And he considered himself merciful for allowing them a quick death in such cases.

** The Bondsmagi love disproportionate revenge. The reason everybody respects them is because killing one will get the entire guild after you to kill you, your family, your pets, etc. They're also known for burning an entire city to ash because a dozen of them died during a war against the Therin Empire.

* [[Michael Crichton]]'s ''[[Timeline]]'' has Robert Doniger, the business-man who sends the heroes back in time to the Middle Ages to fix something gone wrong. Long story short, lots of things go wrong. When our heroes ''do'' get back, they get their revenge on Doniger, unethical as he is, by {{spoiler|sending him back in time with the same machine to the Middle Ages where he gets a nasty case of the ''Black Plague''.}}

* ''The Judgment'', the short story written by [[Franz Kafka]], has a man's father reveal that he is aware that the son has been lying to an old friend living in Russia ([[Mind Screw|who may or may not exist]]) about his engagement. The father then orders the son to drown himself. The son ''does so''.

* [[Tyrant Takes the Helm|Dolores Umbridge]] in the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' books forces students to write lines in their own blood with a quill that cuts into the skin on the backs of their hands. All of this for speaking out of turn and/or questioning the Ministry.

** The ending of ''Chamber of Secrets'' in the film version is formidable. Harry makes Lucius Malfoy lose his slave. Which is a disproportionately '''minor''' retribution when you remember that he caused a young girl to be mind-raped, and tried to organize the murder of every Muggle-born child in Hogwarts. Lucius then falls head-first into this trope by trying to murder Harry with [[Death Ray|the ever-dreaded AK-666]]. [[Throw It In|Of course, it just happened to come into the actor's head during filming; the actual script said something along the lines of "LUCIUS yells a curse to fire at HARRY, who dodges." Nowhere in the script did it have Lucius explicitly yell "Avada Kedavra!"]]

** There's also the treatment Harry received from the Dursleys for most of the eleven years prior to his acceptance into Hogwarts, and occasionally afterward as well. He was confined to the cupboard under the stairs pretty much just for existing, yelled at for asking questions or innocently mentioning strange dreams, and punished (up to and including being denied meals) for exhibiting signs of the hated magic, which he neither understood nor was able to control. For example, in the first book he gets locked in the cupboard for much of the summer just for talking to a snake after the "vanishing glass" incident.

* [[Tom Clancy]]'s ''Without Remorse'' has the ''hero'', [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|after his girlfriend is brutally killed, decide to start killing any drug dealer he runs across, on his way to finding the real killers]].

** Lest we forget, Clark at one point managed to kidnap one of the dealers who killed his girlfriend (and [[Complete Monster|bragged about it]] [[Too Dumb to Live|to Clark]]). He shoved him in a boat and drove back to his island home, leased from the Navy and stocked with all kinds of surplus gear. Like a ''pressurization chamber!!'' For the next ten hours, he uses it to put his captive at around 100 feet simulated depth, and to raise it when [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique|the man didn't answer his questions properly]]. By the time Clark had finished, every joint in the man's body was crippled, [[Eye Scream|the insides of his eyes had burst]], most of his muscles were for all intents and purposes one giant bruise, and he had the next best thing to a stroke. When finished, he drove the man back to the mainland and left him on the beach for the police to find: Blind, incoherent, and crippled, spending the next month in agony before finally dying.

** Roughly two thirds of ''Sum of All Fears'' is about Elizabeth Elliot trying to ruin Ryan's career and marriage for taking offense to ''her'' bad manners in the previous book. The movie version is vastly improved by the fact that she isn't in it.

* In ''[[Altered Carbon]]'', [[Ax Crazy|Takeshi]] [[Crapsack World|Kovacs]] is placed into a torture program for 24 simulated hours by some [[Punch Clock Villain]] technicians hired by the [[Big Bad]]. After he escapes, he remembers a passage from his favorite author about making every struggle personal. He returns to the technicians' office and kills everyone who works there, then goes to a strip club that is tangentially related to the affair and massacres everyone working there as well. He melts the heads of everyone he kills, preventing them from being resurrected in a new body, as most people are after death. His rampage is considered outrageous by everyone who learns about it.

* In ''[[Holes]]'', every member of the Yelnats family and their descendants are cursed with bad luck because one of their ancestors, Elya Yelnats, forgot to fulfill a promise to Madame Zeroni. The promise? All he had to do was carry her up a mountain, and sing a certain song while she drank from the spring on the top.

** Admittedly, the spring apparently had some sort of healing/growth properties that would have given the old and possibly dying Zeroni a longer life. Still a bit harsh, though.

** [[Fridge Brilliance|And it did help her descendent in the long run.]]

* A race introduced by [[Timothy Zahn]] in the ''[[Hand of Thrawn]]'' duology have this as part of their legal code. The penalty for murder is death, life for life - either one who is guilty, or ten of his clan who are innocent. They use this to justify flattening a Bothan space station and further inflaming the political mess engulfing the New Republic.

** The bothans themselves. A species had a single member slight the bothan race, and in retaliation, they burned the homeworld, slaughtered every member of the species, erased records of them, and '''Made them never have existed.'''

* According to [[Aristotle]], Greek [[Tragedy]] actually requires that the [[Tragic Hero]] suffer disproportionate retribution for his actions. Aristotle judged that it had to be this way because if the hero was innocent than he wouldn't get [[Character Development]] and if he deserved his fate than it wouldn't be tragic.

* A lot of characters in Maggie Furey's ''[[Shadowleague]]'' trilogy teeter on the brink of this, but as of the first book (''The Heart of Myrial''), only one character has gone over - intending torture, rape and murder for a noble who seems perfectly unaware that her grunts (who have already died for their crimes) were committing said crimes, and killing whatever innocent bystanders stand in his way.

** Grzylov from ''Air Battle Force'' loses a baseful of bombers when Patrick has them destroyed to stop them attacking Turkmenistan. His response in ''Plan of Attack''? {{spoiler|Nuclear sneak attacks that wipe out most of the American strategic arsenal.}}

** In ''Executive Intent'', Somali pirates attack a Chinese ship. At first, the Chinese helicopter sent tries to warn them off. When the pirates start killing hostages, the helicopter crew respond by attacking the pirates. Fair enough. Then the helicopter is shot down by a pirate. The Chinese response is a massive aerial and amphibious attack and takeover of Mogadishu. Later, some Yemeni terrorists crash an explosive-laden boat into a Chinese warship, sinking it. The Chinese proceed to punish Yemen too.

* In one [[G. K. Chesterton]] [[Father Brown]] story, the [[Asshole Victim]] was inclined to do this. In retaliation for an insult years before, he threw a Moslem into a pig-sty, breaking his arm and his leg, and then left him there overnight. That wasn't why he was murdered, though: {{spoiler|He [[Wife Husbandry|proposed to his ward]], and was rejected. His planned revenge for this was to have her marry an old friend of his, ''and then have the old friend hanged for murder''.}}

* Done a great deal in ~Aesop's Fables~. One particularly harsh example is in the story of the monkey and the camel. The monkey danced for all the desert animals and amused them with how nimble and cute he was. The camel saw this and figured that he could do just as well. He showed off, trying to dance as well, but of course was much clumsier and oafish. The animals were so annoyed at his terrible dancing that they drove him out of the desert, and then ate him, "serving refreshments of camel humps and ribs". [[Nightmare Fuel|Ow.]]

* In Andy Hoare's [[White Scars]] novel ''Hunt for Voldorius'', Malya is chosen for Voldorius's equerry. They get her to obey by threatening to kill a hundred people every time she is disobedient.

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] story "[[The Phoenix on the Sword]]", Thoth-Amon, having gotten back his [[Ring of Power]] and wanting more than anything to make his former master Ascalante pay for all the humiliation he's heaped upon him, sends a demon of Set after him and throws in, just for giggles, everyone with him at the time. Including, as it happens, Conan whom Ascalante was trying to assassinate at the time.

** In "[[Beyond the Black River]]", Conan vows to kill ten Picts for Balthus's death, and seven for the dog that died with him. To be sure, the Picts had slaughtered a lot more than seventeen in their attack.

** Earlier on in the story, the Dog immediately tells the Cat that they can never be friends again ''just because the Cat didn't want to come along on his exploration trip.'' Really, it's not all that hard to see why the Cat would prefer not to retain too close a relationship with such jerks.

* In [[Laurence Yep|Laurence Yep's]] ''[[Dragon Series]]'', a teenager is forced into a marriage with a river spirit. Upon escaping (after a thousand years, mind you), and seeing her former village had become a wealthy and industrialized city, Civet is overcome by loss and decides that dragons are responsible. She destroys the Inland Sea where the Inland dragons live, by taking away all the water, and then uses the water to destroy River Glen, her former village.

* In ''[[Children Of The River]]'', Sundara's [[Love Interest]] back in Cambodia, Chamroeun, is revealed to have been {{spoiler|[[Off with His Head|beheaded with a hoe]] for (horror of horrors) stealing a potato because he was hungry}}.

* In ''[[Daemon|Freedom]]'', [[Heroic Sociopath|Loki/Gragg]] ruins the credit rating of someone fool enough to cut his queue.

* The captain of the Albatross in the ''[[Knight and Rogue Series]]'' has Michael flogged for accidentally spilling paint on him. Bonus points for Michael not having been the one to spill the paint in the first place.

* In an example of disproportionately low retribution, the head inquisitor in the ''[[Safehold]]'' novels gives orders that result in a massacre and is sentenced to one week's kitchen duty.

* In ''The Highland Twins at the [[Chalet School]]'', when Fiona McDonald makes a snarky comment at Betty Wynne-Davies, Betty responds by planning to steal the Chart of Erisay, a document containing military information about the remote Scottish island where the McDonalds live. She then makes a deal with a Nazi spy to hand it over to him, after he hears her talking about it and corners her. When news gets back to the school and police are called in, Betty winds up being expelled.

** More generally, one way to guarantee getting punished in the Chalet School, usually by fines and a heavy ticking off, is...''talking slang''. Yeah.

 

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