English Homework - Prejudice

Prejudice: The feuding families in Romeo and Juliet create tension and conflict, not unlike feuding cultures in today's society.

Families in the modern day society when two people fall in love it tends to bring the family closer to each other and give them time to get to know and explore each other’s family. The love that Romeo and Juliet have although it came about very suddenly is not like the way two people would usually fall in love in the modern society. The conflict and tension that is shown by the two families does not give them the chance to experience the real love between Romeo and Juliet, as they will never want to be together. As Romeo and Juliet grow closer and begin to understand how strong their love for each other is we begin to see the tension and conflict between the two families grow. We see examples of how Juliet doesn’t feel as close with her family as it becomes obvious that she hasn’t told her father about the fact she will marry Romeo as her father has already set her up to marry someone else. Juliet has a hard time trying to find a way to express this to her father, as the two families do not get along very well. In the modern day society families tend to connect and experience the true love that is occurring. This is very different in the play of Romeo and Juliet.

English Homework - Fate and Fortune

How significant is Romeo's belief in fate and fortune when it comes to the audience's understanding of the events leading up to Act III, Scene ii?

Romeos belief in fate and fortune plays a large role in the play as Romeo is constantly throughout the play known to be a strong believer of the idea of fate and fortune. Foreshadowing is used to show the role of fate by Romeo in act I scene v, line 105 – 110 when he states “I fear too early, for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin his fearful date with this nights revels, and expire the term of a despised life closed in my breast, by some vile forfeit of untimely death.” This is showing that there are obviously consequences that will come from this and he believes this is due to the idea of fate and fortune. We can clearly see that Romeo very much believes in the idea of fate and by using the technique of foreshadowing the audience is able to get a sense that something bad may be about to happen as a consequence for being an extremely strong believer in the idea of fate and fortune. 

English Homework - Love vs Lust

Romeo and Juliet are obsessed, infatuated, out of control, and irrational. Sounds like lust to me.

Romeo and Juliet constantly display their love for each other and show how deeply they have fallen for each other. They have become obsessed with each other and their love is like nothing any one has experienced. Throughout the play Romeo is falling more and more deeply in love with Juliet to the point where he wants to marry her and be with her for the rest of his life. We see a change in Romeo from being totally obsessed with a girl, finding out she doesn’t love him back and becoming depressed, to finding someone more beautiful and falling deeply in love with Juliet. Romeo has loved Juliet from the moment he saw her at the party, which is known as love at first sight. Romeo throughout the play always speaks about Juliet in a very poetic way as if she is a saint. Juliet constantly reprimands him and tells him not to be so over the top when he describes her. In act II scene vi we start to get a clear indication of how their values lie with each other. Throughout we see that they both have true feelings for each other and this becomes more and more obvious when Romeo asks Juliet to marry her and she says yes. 

English Homework - Representations of Love in Romeo and Juliet

In Act 1, we are already made aware that there can be multiple representations of love. Based on what we know of Romeo at this point in the play, how does Shakespeare represent love through the character of Romeo.

Shakespeare uses many different techniques to represent love through the character Romeo in the play. Shakespeare is representing love as a very important part of life by using Romeo and showing that he is very in love with a girl that doesn’t love him back. Shakespeare represents love in the play through the character Romeo as disheartening. This gives us the idea that when you fall in love to hard it can make you very upset. This is shown when Shakespeare shows that Romeo wants to be alone and doesn’t want to be around anyone which gives us the idea that when you fall in love and they don’t love you back, it can make you extremely depressed. Shakespeare uses imagery to show how Romeo is feeling when he finds out that the girl he is obsessed with doesn’t love him back which gives us a clear image in our head of his feelings at this time. Shakespeare shows us that the character of Romeo only loves physical beauty in a girl and he believes that the girl he loves physical beauty is going to waste. This makes the audience question why Romeo would fall so hard for someone based purely on how beautiful she is. This also impacts the way we view the love that Romeo has for girls in the play. Throughout the play the theme of love is clearly represented through the character of Romeo.