No
matter the way it is looked at, killing another human being is wrong. Even
though the child molester may have deserved
to be beaten for his actions, when Dave killed him it was still wrong. On that
same note, Jimmy’s promise to his deceased daughter at the very beginning, that
he would kill whoever did this to her, was also morally wrong. Jimmy only made
that promise out of love for his sweet daughter; he only wanted to fix the wrong that had been done.
However, jut as that old cliché saying goes- two wrongs do not make a right. That being said, at the end of the
film when Jimmy questions Dave about what he did, he did it for the right
reasons. He did so he could catch a killer. He did it so he could protect his
family. He did it for Katie. Revenge converts
a little right into a great wrong. Jimmy’s decision to kill Dave after the
pressured confession was wrong all in itself, however, when it came out that
Dave had not killed Katie it was a new level of wrong. Now Jimmy had murdered a
childhood best friend, one who had endured a lifetime of suffering already; and
he had done it all in vain. All of this hurt was the result of revenge, the
attempt to fix a wrong with another wrong. Jimmy took the life of a father, a
husband, a friend and now he must carry that guilt around for the rest of his
life.
Not only did Jimmy live his life with guilt from letting Dave get taken away by the two older men in his childhood, but he now carries even more guilt because he wrongly accused and killed Dave as well. Briana realizes that the many wrongs of the movie come about as a result of revenge. Dave kills the child-molester as revenge for personally getting sexually abused when he was younger. Jimmy kills Dave as revenge for him "murdering" his daughter. The saying "two wrongs do not make a right" is very relevant to the situation that occurs in the movie. The end reveals two broken families: one losing a daughter and sister, another losing a father and husband.
ReplyDeleteJoey notices how revenge never really ceases. The acts of revenge turn into a domino effect. Everyone wants to right what they see as "wrong"- a never ending string of vengeance. The question is, will Dave's widowing wife seek revenge for her husband's murder?
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