The relevance of Pain and Justice

I was at first at a loss for what I was to connect in this section. I decided to reflect back on previous books I have read and knowledge I have gained for an idea on what to discuss. What unfolded out of this process was the connection between Pain and Justice. When the two are combined it is almost a thought of a deserving punishment by those who have "done wrong" or feel they have diverged from the long and narrow path.

My mind is racing with ideas, so let me try and break this down so we are on the same page. People in todays society and the past as far back as can be recalled have had this constant mindset. When someone does wrong they are punished... sometimes physically and sometime mentally. They receive this "punishment" which causes some sort of pain to justify the wrong action that was committed. In a literary example I turn to the every famous, not so cheerful, Scarlet Letter.

Scarlet Letter was a story about a women named Hester whose husband sent her to America and was to meet back up with her shortly. He failed to arrive. She committed adultry and gave birth to a girl. As punishment she was forced to where this bright, scarlet, letter "A" on her breast as a visual way to show the town the crime she had commit. This forced her to live a life of shame and she was looked down upon by all. Her husband arrives and hearing of what has become of his wife, decides to keep his identity secret. The man who she had an affair with begins to go through major psychological stress, the cause unknown to the people. Her husband begins watching over him and sees that he has a scarlet letter slashed into his chest. He later exposes what he did and later dies. (more information at http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-167,pageNum-5.html)

This story shows of the justice sort of punishment, Hester and her scarlet letter, as well the physical sort of punishment, as with Dimmesdale and his self inflicted pain. Dimmesdale went through his because of his guilt for what he had done. He knew that what he had done was wrong and his conscious caused him to go trough the agony that he did. Alot of times when someone is not punished by others for something they had done wrong, they are forced by there conscious to punish themselves. For example if a child breaks something of great value, but there other sibling get punished wrongly, the child will eventually confess to what they have done. It is a way of justice to themselves for wrong doing. Society is dependant of this pain and justice correlation to help individuals learn from there mistakes and to not make the same error again. This is how I view the relation of pain and justice.

http://www.luckyspinster.com/Punishment.jpg

(An example of punishment long ago. Although inducing little physical punishment, it causes shame and disrespect)