Stoic Week 2/5: Revenge

Note: Both Epictetus and Aurelius examined fictional characters like Medea and Hercules through a Stoic lens. Inspired, I apply the Stoic orientation to the messed-up impressions of characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966) and then I had the ghost in the machine recast it in the style of Marcus Aurelius. In the novel TCOT Phantom Fortune, Perry Mason says, “Make up your mind to one thing, Mrs. Warren. After water has run downstream and over the dam, you can't find any way on earth of getting it back upstream and over the dam a second time. Take things as they come. Concentrate on the present, forget the past.”

The Case of the Lonely Heiress (Season 1, Episode 20, 2/1/58)

Observe Delores, as portrayed by Anna Navarro - a force of nature, yes, but one enslaved by her own passions. She lashes out not because others provoke her, but because she has allowed anger and anxiety to become the lens through which she sees the world. She is not free. She is ruled.

And what of her love for Charlie? If it is love, it is love corrupted - possessive, destructive, conditional. “If I cannot have him, no one can.” This is not affection. It is tyranny disguised as longing.

When poor Delores asks, “Do you think I’m a bad girl?” the question pierces the heart. The Stoic does not rush to condemn. We are all flawed, all fallible. But when one’s life is a litany of cruelty - greed, violence, deceit, exploitation - then yes, we must say: this is not the path of virtue. This is the path of ruin.

And yet, Delores is not the only one lost. Marilyn seeks revenge for her sister’s self-destruction, believing Charlie to be the cause. But what is revenge, if not the surrender of reason to emotion? To retaliate is to become the very thing that wounded you. It is to let another’s vice dictate your own virtue.

Marcus Aurelius reminds us: “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” To plot revenge is to allow external events to govern your inner state. It is to give away your peace, your judgment, your soul.

Let Marilyn learn from pain. Let her transform grief into wisdom. Let her choose forgiveness - not because the wrong was small, but because her spirit is large. Forgiveness is not weakness. It is strength. It is the refusal to be ruled by bitterness.

And let us remember: rage, revenge, and resentment are thieves. They steal our clarity, our compassion, our capacity for excellence. The Stoic does not deny emotion - but he does not serve it. He serves reason. He serves virtue. He serves the inner citadel.