Thursday, March 29, 2012

Juliet's Death: Who's the Culprit?

In the play Romeo and Juliet, how do we know who actually killed Juliet? We all know that her extreme love towards Romeo is the reason she killed herself but is there anything else that caused her untimely death? In my opinion, family loyalty played a huge role in Juliet's death. Juliet, before she met Romeo, is very loyal to her family. She is doing everything her father and mother tells her to. Friar Lawrence said "and this shall free thee from this present shame" to Juliet, talking about the shame Juliet brought upon her family, causing her not to be able to marry Paris, who his father wants her to marry. This loyalty, along with love towards Romeo made Juliet to jump to the idea of taking in some potion from Friar Lawrence, who is also I blame for Juliet's death. All these contributed to Juliet's frustration up to the point she decided to fake her death. Romeo, not knowing that Friar Lawrence sent him a letter about this, rushed to Juliet like a mad bull. Romeo arrived at the scene just a few seconds early but Juliet is about to wake up from her sleep and spend the rest of her life with her dear love Romeo. However, Romeo, again, not knowing that Juliet is just sleeping, ingested a vile of poison he bought from Balthazar. When Juliet, wakes up, she sees Romeo gasping for life as he is dying. Juliet, aggravated by this scene, took Romeo's dagger, saying, "Yea noise? Then I'll be brief. O happy dagger, This is my sheath. There rust and let me die.", then she dies. Because of this incident, overall, I would blame Juliet's extreme love towards Romeo causing her death. 

1 comment:

  1. Great post Julius. Watch your grammar though.

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