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What Is Heathcliff's Motivation In Wuthering Heights

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Character motivation reveals a lot about a character as a person. A character’s intentions show their morals and beliefs. Revenge is getting back at someone for what they have done. Revenge is Heathcliff's motivation in Wuthering Heights. His entire life is centered around it. In Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, the reader can see the theme of revenge through the unraveling of Heathcliff's vindictive character, his marriage to Isabella and purchasing of Wuthering Heights, and the corrupting of his generation's offspring.
In the novel, the author slowly reveals Heathcliff’s vindictive character by displaying situations where he acts with a twisted response. Lockwood is attacked by Heathcliff’s dogs at the beginning of the book. Heathcliff responds by saying, “They won’t meddle with persons who touch nothing.” (page 4) This shows how he believes that people get what they deserve. It also shows how twisted he is, because Lockwood was hurt, and Heathcliff did not seem to care at all. Later on in the novel, Hindley’s wife, Frances, dies. While he is consumed in grief, Heathcliff offers him a way out of this sadness by pouring him a drink. This shows how he does …show more content…

The true first step to his plan, is when he buys Wuthering Heights. Hindley stays with the house, so Heathcliff now owns the person he is most determined to bring revenge upon. This also gets him closer to the Grange, which he ultimately wanted too. While talking with Catherine, he asks, “She’s her brother’s heir, is she not?” (page 78) After finding out this information, he uses Isabella’s infatuation with him to marry her and get revenge on Edgar. He did this, because he makes fun of him for trying to be like the other kids earlier in the novel. This also got him more money making him more superior. After these steps were completed, he was ready to carry on his revenge on the next

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Like “The Garden Party”, Lockwood’s trip can be interpreted as a trip to Hades. By alluding to the Underworld through Lockwood’s trip to Wuthering Heights and subsequent attempt to leave, Bronte is able to foreshadow the dark events at Wuthering Heights to come. When Lockwood first reaches Wuthering Heights, he is attacked by Heathcliff’s vicious dogs. “In an arch under the dresser reposed a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer, surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies; and other dogs haunted other recesses” (Bronte 3). The dogs are an allusion to Cerberus, the guard dog of the Underworld, because they are described as huge, vicious, like a brood of tigers.

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In Chapter 10, Heathcliff wants to get revenge by marrying Isabella Linton to steal Edgar's land. Catherine states, "you are too prone to covet your neighbour's goods" (99, Brontë). The Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange scenes are integral to Heathcliff's goals. The weather in Wuthering Heightsforeshadows certain events and keeps the viewer engaged in the story.

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Love is not always right especially in the case of this tragic tale. Heathcliff is a troubled man and the abuse he has already experienced inhibits his ability to love properly. This can be seen especially through his reaction and heartbreak to Catherine’s death: “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you--haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers.

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In the novel, he had a major conflict with Edgar. They both conducted psychological warfare. The most horrible thing he did was to lock Cathy and Nelly like a prison. He forced Cathy to marry Linton before he dies, and did not send her to her father, Edgar. His evil thoughts and plans ruined many people’s lives, he seems like he wanted to make everyone to suffer.

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Earnshaw dies and is replaced by Hindley as master of Wuthering Heights. Acting on his previous hatred for Heathcliff because the latter was viewed "as a usurper of [Hindley's] parent's affections and...privileges" (Brontë 38), Hindley “drove [Heathcliff]…to the servants” (Brontë 46) and subjected the boy to severe thrashings and floggings for the simplest annoyance. As a result, Heathcliff grew harder and more resentful of Hindley, plotting revenge at every moment. During this time, Cathy was Heathcliff’s love and his only reprieve amongst this torture, but she, too, turns against him, for if “Heathcliff and [she] married, [they] should be beggars” (Brontë 81). To avoid this undesired fate, Cathy went against Heathcliff, her true heart’s love, and chose to marry Edgar only for the superficial reasons that “he is handsome, and young,…and rich” (Brontë 78).

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His father Mr. Earshaw, brought Heathcliff back home as an orphan and named him after his son who died. Hindley is angry not only because his father brought home another son, but as a thinker it raises a question of what emotional attraction he and the brother shared. Emily Bronte says “ The intrusion of an unwanted (by)other can greatly anger young Hindley”. After Mr. Earnshaw gets older he eventually dies, and Hindley ( Earnshaw’s son ) is now the heir to Wuthering Heights, and the anger that had festered started to come out. We also learned that while Hindley may have been hurt by his father's decision to take Heathcliff in.

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The rising action of the novel begins when Catherine comes home, this is when Heathcliff is truly contrasted to a near perfect opposite. The Lintons are described as refined, cultivated people, and what is worse; they appear to have refined and cultivated Catherine into a young lady. This marks a drastic contrast to the rough and tumble Heathcliff who has kept himself in the background until Catherine calls him forward. She kisses and hugs him at first, and then her nature turns right about and laughs at him directly in his face because he is so “black and cross”. This wounds him and it changes his development from her for the rest of the novel.

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Once he doesn’t have Catherine to exert his power onto, Heathcliff has nobody and nothing to live for. He can abuse the children all he wants, but their physically being inferior proves nothing of his power over people worth proving it to. Instead, he has a sick desire to torment Catherine even past her death for how she wronged him. In another case, Heathcliff’s request to be buried directly next to Catherine by the moors may also suggest the same idea of eternal love and rest. However, considering the theme of Heathcliff’s desire to get even with everybody else he lived around, it only makes sense

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But he was wild and the spirit of revenge. In the end of novel, Heathcliff was crazy because he sees the ghost of Catherin and hi

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