hey guys! i wanted to post something extra for this week and i thought of sharing an essay i wrote for a class i took last year about romeo and juliet's cause for their fate! it's only an extra piece of writing that i'm proud of, and wanted to put out in the world- please don't feel the need to read if you don't want to, it's total different lens then this blog. hope you guys enjoy, and i'll catch you next week when you flip the page! ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆
*spoilers for romeo and juliet ahead!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the 1600s, marriage was either a choice of linking between two individuals in love, or a pressurized choice for a rising in status. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare shares a story of two children who face harsh emotional realities and conflicts. The protagonists live in a time where familial connections and social statuses determine personas; while a major enmity between two families leads to tensions and satire of characters to make life-changing decisions in their youth. The two children of the families fall in deep love, but their decision of an illicit marriage threatens their lives. These poor decisions have life altering consequences and are chosen and executed without maturity. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the major force that contributes and builds up the events leading to the tragedy is Romeo and Juliet’s lack of emotional intelligence because of their petulance and juvenility, resulting in them making immature decisions which causes their demise.
Romeo is introduced as a teenage boy who has one straight-forward interest: ‘love’. In the beginning of the play, he is introduced as a sappy, longing and dramatic lover-boy who only cares about his friends and a potential romantic interest. These characteristics are normal for boys his age because of their immaturity and lack of emotional intelligence. A specific part of the story in which he exhibited this is after he meets Juliet and goes to Friar Lawrence to ask him to marry them, the friar asks him about his previous girl, Rosaline, to which he responds by saying, “With Rosaline, father? No, I have forgotten that girl and all the sadness she brought me” (Shakespeare 33). This shows that Romeo tends to get over his emotions quickly and has the ability to move on fast, suggesting that his feelings towards Rosaline were inauthentic, which can only raise the question that what if his feelings for Juliet were the same? Also keeping in mind that him and Juliet’s first meeting only happened the night before he went to the friar. This supports that his love toward Juliet could be only love overpowered by lust, which proves that his youthfulness and his lack of emotional intelligence leads him to marry Juliet because of her beauty, resulting in their death. Another instance where Romeo lets his feelings get the best of him is during the climax of the story, when he gets tangled in between a fight with Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, who kills Mercutio, his best friend, where he threatens Tybalt with passion, saying, “Mercutio’s soul is floating right above our heads. He’s waiting for you to keep him company on the way up to heaven. Either you, or I, or both of us have to go with him.” (Shakespeare 49). Romeo, acting out of pressure and tension, wants to kill Tybalt to avenge Mercutio. Although not immature, he could have taken a step back and thought about his actions before proceeding to kill Tybalt, showing his lack of emotional intelligence and thought process which could have prevented his banishment and death.
In the beginning of the story, unlike Romeo, Juliet presents herself as an independent young woman, but sparks a change in herself after meeting Romeo, becoming a version of herself that is naive, unlike who she is in the beginning. In particular, when Shakespeare first introduces her to the audience, and her mother tries to convince her to marry a Count, she says, “I’ll look at him and try to like him, at least if what I see is likable. But I won’t let myself fall for him any more than your permission allows” (Shakespeare 15), and she later on speaks to Romeo after meeting him saying, “...if you won’t change your name, just swear you love me and I’ll stop being a Capulet” (Shakespeare 27). While Romeo is shown as the sappy and petulant lover, Juliet is shown as a dynamic character whose maturity begins to decrease as she meets her ‘love’, Romeo, who she likes more than the Count, so she falls head over heels for him, as shown in the second quote, but her emotional maturity also falls down. She is shown as a child with naivety and susceptible to change because of affection, therefore showing that she lacks emotional intelligence, which eventually leads to her death. In another instance, during the famous ‘balcony scene’, Romeo and Juliet meet for the second time, and wound up making a- first hesitant, but then sure- marital choice, where Juliet confesses, “Although you bring me joy, I can’t take joy in this exchange of promises tonight. It’s too crazy. We haven’t done enough thinking. It’s too sudden….three words, dear Romeo, and then it’s good night for real. If your intentions as a lover are truly honorable and you want to marry me, send me word tomorrow” (Shakespeare 29-30). Juliet, showing some maturity, first decides to take a step back from Romeo and his proposition to have her this night, but after a few words of affection from him, she has a moment of change where she decides she wants to get married. This shows her teenage naivety as she puts aside her forward look on her choices, but then erases that from her mind, and decides to get married, lastly proving her weak emotional intelligence is what leads to her permanent slumber.
Therefore, the most insurmountable force that leads to the character's tragic fate of death is their lack of emotional intelligence in Romeo and Juliet by Shakespere. Juliet, being a dynamic character, starts off emotionally mature, but then becomes influenced by Romeo who she falls in love with, and starts to side with his similar decisions, while Romeo is shown as to always have been the same emotionally thus having his fate sought out to begin with due to his poor mentality. This also implies that teenagers of this day and age should think through their decisions maturely and consult adults if necessary when making impactful decisions, so the fate of Romeo and Juliet only belongs to them.
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