Romeo And Juliet And West Side Story

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The Parallels of Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story


In the world today, problems exist due to common differences. The two plays, Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, show conflict between people because of who they are, where they are from, and what they look like. In the two above-mentioned plays, the story lines show how people and groups can cause grief and sorrow toward one another. The characters also show how people can overcome their differences because of a common cause.

When Romeo arrives at Juliet’s tomb, he finds her dead, when in actuality she took a drug to make it seem like she was dead. She awakens to find that Romeo has poisoned himself because he though Maria had truly died. When Juliet awakens she is overwhelmed by Romeo’s death and stabs herself with a dagger. The two families, the Capulets and the Montagues, realize what they did to each other and reconcile. West Side Story parallels Romeo and Juliet in the scene where Tony is running around the courtyard yelling for Chino to kill him. Tony and Maria spot each other and immediately start running towards each other. Chino arrives and shoots Tony; he later dies in Maria’s arms. The two gangs reconcile and assist each other in carrying Tony’s body away. These two scenes were the climax of the two plays, which was the most interesting scene to me.

In both plays, the two main male characters die. Romeo dies by a poison he obtained because he could not live without Juliet. Tony is frustrated with Chino, Maria’s brother, because he would not let them see each other. Chino could not get past their love and ends up killing Tony. In the plays, one female character kills herself and the other lives. Juliet awakens to find her true love dead; this is too much for Juliet and she cannot live without Romeo, so she takes her own life with a dagger. As Maria sees Tony die, she does not kill herself. Maria realizes she knows things will get...