Romeo and Juliet Short Answer Responses

These are two short answer responses I did over Romeo and Juliet.

 

In a chain reaction of events, the main or original event that caused the deaths of Romeo and Juliet is Friar John’s failed attempt to deliver the message that Juliet is alive to Romeo. Since Romeo believes that the love of his life is dead, due to ignorance not of his own fault, but of Friar John’s, he decides to kill himself. Then upon viewing her husband dead, Juliet makes the same decision of death. Friar Laurence is troubled when he hears the news that the message was not delivered as he knew its significance and knew consequences would most likely occur. The audience recognizes this by his distressing words, “The letter was not nice, but full of charge, of dear import, and neglecting it may do much danger,” found in Act V, Scene 2, lines 18-20. The consequences, or resulting danger, were in fact the deaths of the beloved Romeo and Juliet. This message carried the weight of Romeo’s knowledge and the plan for the couple to have a happy ending, however when Friar John did not deliver the message the plan crumbled leaving a dead Romeo and Juliet in its dust.

                                                         

The main theme of the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet is that there are tragic consequences to conflict, no matter how small. Even a family feud, minuscule when compared to war, results in immense sadness and grief. The character Prince illustrates this best as he is deeply affected just by turning a blind eye. He lost loved ones too, “And I, for at your discords too, have lost a brace of kinsmen,” and his character clearly symbolizes that in conflict, “All are punished,” as told by him in Act V, Scene 3, lines 294-295. The devastating consequences of the conflict led to, “Never was a story of more woe,” as said in Act V, Scene 3, line 309. Conflict on any scale result in grief as shown by the character Prince and the play of Romeo and Juliet.