poetic justice
Ironic just desserts
Poetic justice is an outcome in which virtue is rewarded and vice punished in a fitting or ironic way—the bully who gets bullied, the thief whose possessions are stolen.
The term suggests narrative satisfaction, as if events followed the moral logic of poetry rather than the randomness of life: It was poetic justice when the corrupt judge ended up in his own prison.
- comeuppanceDeserved punishment or rebuke
- what goes aroundActions returning to sender
- retributionPunishment for wrongdoing
- karmaSpiritual cause and effect
- fallDescend under gravity
nemesis · punishment · hubris · petard · payback · just punishment · trope · backfire · tables turned · motif · just deserts · taste of their own medicine · self-sabotage · unintended consequences · catharsis · tragic hero · tragic flaw · ironic twist
- justicecourtroom, trials, courts, gavel, judges
- turn the tablesrevenge, payback, comeback, retaliation, counterattack
- karmacomeuppance, good deeds, karmic debt, what goes around comes around, karmic cycle
- literary idiomscatch-22, red herring, white whale, chapter and verse, by the book
- melodramavillain, heroine, hero, damsel in distress, happy ending
- ironic twiststwist of fate, dramatic irony, situational irony, tragic irony, reversal of fortune
poetic justiceinjustice
Denial of fair treatment
miscarriage of justice · innocent suffering · travesty of justice · getting away with it
justice, poet, justify, poetic, unjust, injustice, poems, justly, justifying