What is poetic justice? WAS: Re: Snape-the Hero -- Snape-the Abuser

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 143346

> Ginger adds, as a clarification:
> 
> I kind of coined the phrase "vicarious retribution" as Alla 
applies 
> it.  To put it in a nutshell, poetic justice is within the story.  
> Vicarious retribution is for the reader.
> 
> VR is like Dudley and the pig's tail.  He didn't do anything to 
> deserve the pig's tail from Hagrid, but we the readers know that 
he's 
> been a nasty little prick to Harry for the last decade.  He gets 
> what's coming to him, not for the situation at that moment, but 
for 
> what he has done for the last decade. 

a_svirn:
I understand what you are saying, but I simply can't bring myself to 
accept the term. Because vicarious retribution for a reader would 
mean a reader with a pig's tail. 

You seem to interpret "vicarious" as referred to the instrument of 
justice rather than to a person that is being punished. For one 
thing it's wrong– in the Bible and elsewhere it means `someone 
enduring punishment for someone else', like when God visited sins of 
the fathers on their children. For another thing it's confusing – 
does it mean that Harry should have been the one to transform 
Dudley? As a sort of comeuppance humour it doesn't make any 
difference, while from the ethic standpoint it would have been only 
slightly better if he did it on purpose. 

> Ginger:
> We get the vicarious thrill that there has been retribution done 
for 
> the previous misdeeds of the character, whether that person 
deserved 
> it at that moment or not.  

a_svirn:
But isn't *any* thrill we get from a book *vicarious* in that sense? 
I mean, it's not like  *we* are the ones who are being loved, hated, 
kissed and avenged?