Poetic Justice - Examples

Examples

• "For 'tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard." (Shakespeare, Hamlet (III.iv.226).)
• The story of Esther includes two instances of poetic justice, both involving Haman. Ultimately, Haman is executed on the gallows that he had prepared for Esther's cousin Mordecai.
• Dante's Divine Comedy reads like a compendium of examples of poetic justice.
• Many episodes of The Twilight Zone feature poetic justice, usually due to an ironic twist.
• An interesting and unusual example of poetic justice is found in Dr Pradhan's Sahitya Akademi award-winning poem Equation where the economic-sexual exploiters of poor tribals in Kalahandi, (Orissa) get paid back in their own coin when they get afflicted with various maladies and sexually transmitted diseases.
• The self-fulfilling prophecy can be considered an early example of poetic justice. One example of this is the ancient Sanskrit story of Krishna, where King Kamsa is told in a prophecy that a child of his sister Devaki would kill him. In order to prevent it, he imprisons both Devaki and her husband Vasudeva, allowing them to live only if they hand over their children as soon as they are born. He murders nearly all of them one by one, but the eighth child, Krishna, is saved and raised by a cowherd couple, Nanda and Yasoda. After growing up and returning to his kingdom, Krishna eventually kills Kamsa. In other words, Kamsa's cruelty in order to prevent his death is what led to him being killed.