Revenge is a dish best served cold... but what about vengeance?
People often confuse the two ideas. Which is understandable because they have a lot of similarities between them. Both have a desire to set the wrong things right. To take an act of injustice and make it right in some way. Those who seek it are often doing it out of anger, with violence being the most obvious way to achieve it. Usually killing the people who committed the act of injustice takes place although not always. It depends on what would be the most powerful way to get what they want out of their need for justice.
Where the two differ however is in the underlying purpose for the anger itself. While revenge is often cold and calculating, hence the phrase mentioned above, vengeance comes from a different place. Revenge is about destruction of those who have done you wrong. A desire to make them feel pain, usually physical, inflicting it upon others and it can be acted upon anyone and anything. The anger someone feels is visited upon someone else. Vengeance on the other hand comes from a place of pain and sadness.
It's not about inflicting pain on others. It's about the pain within that can't be dealt with in any other way. You have to find a way to make the pain go away or it will destroy you from within. This process isn't about the injustice itself but about what the act causes you to feel. Your pain has to have a specific target and it has to give you a sense of closure. If you can't find a sense of closure, you end up adrift and without purpose but that pain doesn't go away. All you do is sit and stew in it, perpetuating your own suffering.
At it's core, this is what The Crow is about. The pain that Eric Draven feels over the loss he's experienced, mainly that of his own life and that of the woman he loves, Shelley Webster. He can't live with the pain and the sadness that this causes him, even in his own death. So he is forced to find an outlet for this pain in the ones who destroyed him and Shelley. In doing this, he feels a sense of purpose and desire. There is nothing else for him, only a way to end the pain he feels.
Everything else was taken from him. Things like friendships don't have any meaning for him anymore, except those who can temporarily help him achieve his fundamental goal. Despite the fact that he has people who still care for him and who feel what happened to him was unjust, he can't connect to them in any meaningful way. Both because once he achieves his goal he can move on to a better place and be with the woman he loves, and because what they want is no longer what he wants.
They still have a life to live. They can still connect with others and have a complete life. He can't have any of that.
All he can have is vengeance.
I highly recommend you check out The Crow and explore the distinction for yourself.
Check out the movie currently on Amazon.
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