填空题 .  Poetic Justice in Literature
    Poetic justice can best be described by the phrase "you reap what you sow" as, essentially, good deeds are rewarded whereas bad deeds are punished. As a literary device, it provides readers with a sense of satisfaction that everything ultimately turns out properly since good emerges triumphant and evil is vanquished. Poetic justice appears throughout history in the literature in cultures around the world. There is a universal trend in which people sympathize with good characters who suffer and wish ill upon bad individuals who cause suffering. By employing poetic justice, an author can give the reading audience exactly what it wants.
    Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle did not entirely agree with its use since he believed tragedy's primary purpose was to evoke emotions of pity and fear in an audience, yet poetic justice was common in Greek poetry and drama. The classic example of it is found in the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. An oracle prophesizes that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. Defying the gods and rebelling against his fate, Oedipus flees what he believes to be his homeland and heads for the kingdom of Thebes. During his journey, he quarrels with a stranger on a road and kills the man, and then he weds the king's widow. Unbeknownst to him, the stranger was his father and the woman his mother; they had abandoned him as a baby, and he had been raised in a foreign land. In the Greek mind, Oedipus was rightly punished for attempting to alter his destiny, which only the gods could determine.
    The plays of William Shakespeare abound with examples of poetic justice as well. Hamlet has one instance in the guise of Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, who murders Hamlet's father, usurps the throne, and then marries Hamlet's mother. By the end of the play, Claudius receives his just reward when Hamlet kills him. In other Shakespearian plays, including King Lear and Macbeth, greed and the desire for power result in tragedy for those whose misdeeds trigger terrible events and subsequently receive their deserved fate by the end of the play.
    *vanquish: to defeat, often in battle
    *prophesize: to tell the future1.  The author discusses Oedipus Rex in paragraph 2 in order to ______