romeo and juliet essay prompts pdf

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Romeo and Juliet

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A+ Student Essay

In Romeo and Juliet, which is more powerful: fate or the characters’ own actions?

In the opening Prologue of Romeo and Juliet , the Chorus refers to the title characters as “star-crossed lovers,” an allusion to the belief that stars and planets have the power to control events on Earth. This line leads many readers to believe that Romeo and Juliet are inescapably destined to fall in love and equally destined to have that love destroyed. However, though Shakespeare’s play raises the possibility that some impersonal, supernatural force shapes Romeo and Juliet’s lives, by the end of the play it becomes clear that the characters bear more of the responsibility than Fortune does.

Though the Prologue offers the first and perhaps most famous example of celestial imagery in Romeo and Juliet , references to the stars, sun, moon, and heavens run throughout the play, and taken as a whole that imagery seems to express a different view of human responsibility. In Act 1, scene 4, Romeo says that he fears “some consequence yet hanging in the stars” when he and his gang approach the Capulet’s ball. In his next mention of stars, however, Romeo doesn’t refer to their astrological power. Rather, he uses the image of stars to describe Juliet’s otherworldly beauty. Most of the subsequent celestial images in the play follow in this vein, from Romeo’s love-struck comparison of Juliet to the sun to Juliet’s own wish to “cut [Romeo] out into little stars” when he dies. Throughout the play, these astral images are more often associated with the two lovers than with divine fate, emphasizing that, as the play’s action escalates, we cannot simply place the blame for the tragedy on some impersonal external force.

It’s true that Romeo and Juliet have some spectacularly bad luck. Tybalt picks a fatal fight with Romeo on the latter’s wedding day, causing Capulet to move up the wedding with Paris. The crucial letter from Friar Lawrence goes missing due to an ill-timed outbreak of the plague. Romeo kills himself mere moments before Juliet wakes up. It’s also true that the lovers aren’t solely responsible for their difficult situation: Their friends, their families, and their society each played a role in creating the tragic circumstances. However, even if we allow that fate or some other divine force caused Romeo and Juliet to fall in love at first sight, thereby setting the action into motion, Shakespeare makes it clear that the characters’ own decisions push that situation to its tragic conclusion. Either Romeo or Juliet, it is suggested, could have halted the headlong rush into destruction at any of several points.

Romeo’s propensity for rash action gets him—and his beloved—in a lot of trouble. His impulsiveness has made him a romantic icon in our culture, but in the play it proves his undoing. From the very beginning, Shakespeare cautions us not to view Romeo’s sudden fits of passion too idealistically—after all, Shakespeare makes a point to show that Romeo’s love for Juliet merely displaced another, earlier infatuation. Through his hasty actions, Romeo arguably drives the play toward tragedy more aggressively than any other character. He climbs over Juliet’s wall the night they meet and presses her to bind herself to him. He kills Tybalt in a blind rage. Then, thinking Juliet dead, he poisons himself. Romeo never thinks his actions through, and his lack of foresight makes him responsible for their dire consequences.

Though Juliet proves a strong-willed partner for Romeo, she bears less of the blame for their joint fate because she, at least, is wary of the speed at which they progress. In the balcony scene, she compares their love to lightning, which flares up suddenly but can just as quickly fade into darkness. Unlike Romeo, each of Juliet’s fateful choices is a logical response to a situation. She agrees to marry him because she needs evidence that he is truly committed to her. She takes the potion not out of despair, but because she believes Friar Lawrence’s plan will set things to rights. Though each of her choices ends up getting her and her lover deeper into trouble, those choices are at least the result of sober, careful reflection. Only when she sees her beloved dead does she succumb to his style of rashness, killing herself out of grief.

Romeo and Juliet concludes with a strong condemnation of the characters’ actions. In the closing family portrait, the Capulets and the Montagues gather around the tomb to witness the consequences of their absurd conflict. Even if you don’t believe that Romeo and Juliet could have saved themselves, you must admit that their families’ blind hatred caused the situation, not the gods. As the Prince notes, even “[t]he sun for sorrow will not show his head” on that tragic day—even the heavens are pained at the human foolishness they see below.

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Romeo and Juliet

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How do Romeo and Juliet uphold and subvert other characters’ ideas about what it is to be a man or a woman—especially around sexuality?

Why might the death of Mercutio , who might at first seem like a figure of pure comic relief, be such an important turning point in the play?

Romeo and Juliet features a cavalcade of punny jokes. Why might the play use the wordplay it does? How does wordplay relate to the play’s themes?

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Romeoand Juliet Essay

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Romeo and Juliet think the grandness of their passion is enough for them to defy their parents will but the fault in their stars is that the environment around them grows so hostile to their passion as a series of events involving the conflict between the two families escalated by the slaying of Mercutio and Tybalt will lead them to take their own lives to escape the violence. It is thus futile for this pair of teenage lovers to defy providence and their parents’ will as it ends in their own destruction. Romeo and Juliet is then a play about idealized metaphysical love that fails to realize itself in the material world because it is fallen and hostile to their desire.

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The present article attempts to trace the elements of change in the early and late Shakespearean tragedies from the viewpoint of style and the writer’s ideological stance. Shakespeare’s tragic writing undergoes certain modification as he moves further in his career. One aspect of this modification is the change in the protagonist’s dynamism. Although Romeo and Juliet both show certain signs of development which separates them from comic characters, they still lack the psychological depth which is witnessed in Shakespeare’s late tragic heroes. It is true they realize their tragic fate, yet they fail in gaining full consciousness of their situation and their contribution to their own destiny. Another aspect is the change of diction toward a more ‘natural’ employment of language and rhetorical devices. In Shakespeare’s mature tragedies, we do not see the experimental lyricism we witness in Romeo and Juliet, as the playwright seems to adopt the classical notion of decorum, according to ...

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Romeo And Juliet Comparative Essay

Luca Llorens Jonathan Waserman English 9 27 February 2023 The real Romeo and Juliet film adaptation In the film adaptation Romeo and Juliet by Baz Luhrmann, it demonstrates the fight for love between rival gangs and shows that Romeo and Juliet would do anything to be together. However, in West Side Story it feels like it doesn't really get everything out of the play and doesn’t feel the same as the story. In West Side Story, by Jerome Robbins, it is about 2 rival gangs, the Sharks and the Jets in New York. Tony, who is a jet, and Maria, who is the sister to a member of the sharks. Tony and Maria end up running away together and living together. The film version of Romeo and Juliet is a better film adaptation than West Side Story. The essence of the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is that true …show more content…

Romeo never wants to lose Juliet and in this scene he expresses his absolute love for her. In this next quote, it is now Juliet talking instead of Romeo. Well, just see for yourself. “O god, I have an ill-divined soul! Methinks I see thee, now thou art below, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb, either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.” Act 3, scene 5. This quote is from when Juliet is thinking of how she is supposed to live without Romeo, and this quote shows how much she dreads it and how bad she can't live without him. Juliet feels the same way about Romeo as Romeo feels about her, and just as Romeo can't imagine living without her, she can't imagine living without him. In both of these quotations, it describes the real fight that Romeo and Juliet were both willing to fight just to be together. In the first quote, it's Romeo talking about how even though he has a bounty, his love for Juliet is even deeper. Juliet is speaking in the second quote and she is saying how she couldn’t bear to live without Romeo and this is just proving the point even more of

More about Romeo And Juliet Comparative Essay

Romeo and Juliet

Explain the different attitudes and opinions about marriage in act 1 of Romeo and juliet consider Paris,capulet,lady capulet ,juliet and consider the Nurse consider the Nurse consider their ideas about relationships and someof the decisions they make in Act 1 be sure to use quotes from the play to support your answer

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