Most of the choices that Romeo and Juliet make are driven by conflict. How you may ask? Well that’s exactly what we’ll be discussing in this piece of writing. I’ll give three key moments in the play where Romeo and Juliet make choices, and explain why they were driven by conflict, but first let’s talk about these two a little bit. Romeo and Juliet are two people from different families (or households) that are sworn enemies. One night these two meet and fall in love, this proves to be a difficult thing though because of the hatred they are meant to have for each other. Now on to the first choice i’m going to talk about.
Romeo and Juliet’s decision to marry was partly driven by the conflict between the Capulets and Montagues. This is because of Friar Lawrence’s intentions. When Romeo and Juliet decided to get married they went to Friar Lawrence to asking if he will marry them, but his intentions for their marriage was not to cause more war and death but bring peace. He thought that if the two love birds we’re married that maybe the family’s would join together in harmony for their children, of course he was wrong but we’ll get back to that later. “For this alliance may so happy prove, to turn your households rancour to pure love!” Is a phrase in which the Friar says. This roughly translates to “From this marriage, your two households will finally be at peace!” In my opinion I find that the Friar’s intentions we’re very great but if I were in his shoes I would have thought about it a bit more.
Romeo’s banishment was an important part of the story and this was also driven by some conflict. In the story Romeo is to be banished because he killed a Capulet, Tybalt. The whole situation is a little confusing but it goes like this… Tybalt demands a duel and Romeo refuses, then Romeo’s friend Mercutio accepts for him. Romeo tries to stop the duel but Tybalt cheats and stabs Mercutio under Romeo’s arm. Mercutio dies and his last words are, “A plague on both your houses!” which I believe translates to, “I hate both of your households!” Romeo then chases down Tybalt at kills him to avenge his friend causing him to be banished. I think that Romeo should not have killed Tybalt but I understand why he would, to avenge Mercutio. Indeed Tybalt did start an unneeded scandal as well so I would have to say that it was Tybalt’s fault.
Romeo and Juliet’s death was because of the conflict that caused Romeo to be banished. Getting back to Friar Lawrence being wrong in the second paragraph, this is a great example of hatred, not peace. Upon the news of Romeo being banished, Juliet went to Friar Lawrence to see what he could do to help her. The Friar suggests a plan in which Juliet will drink a potion that will make her appear dead when in fact she is still alive. When she is found by the nurse, she will be sent to her vault where all of her family go upon death. She will then later wake up and be free to run away with Romeo, but it doesn’t quite work as planned. When Juliet awakes she finds Romeo to be dead beside her, as he killed himself so he could be with her. Juliet then takes a dagger that Romeo brought and takes it to her heart. In this scene Juliet says… “O happy dagger, this is thy sheath: there rust, and let me die!” I believe this translate to something around the lines of, “Oh dagger, I must not live, use your sharpness and kill me!” In my opinion I think that they overreacted quite a lot and Romeo should have talked to the Friar before killing himself.
So here we are, we have three examples of scenes in the play driven by conflict. Whether the choices they make are intentional or not, they were still made and conflict usually played a part in it. I think that this story would lose a lot of it’s point if there was no conflict involved and it would also be quite boring. So i’m glad that this is how the story goes and I wouldn’t change anything. So in the end I think we can definitely say that this story was very much caused by conflict and it wouldn’t be the same without it. I hope you enjoyed reading this. ?
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