Many people believe that timing controls their life. Timing affects so many factors in life from finding an amazing opportunity to losing a job. One minute can change ones life forever like someone forgetting to put their keys in the normal place the night before and having to search for them. That could cause one to be a couple minutes late and end up stuck in a ton of traffic, which could end up making one late for work. Free will also affects many people life. One's own free will is built up the minute they are burn and shapes itself by parenting and other factors in their life. People whose parents are violent are more likely to be violent, and peoples whose parents are nice and loving are more likely to be kind and responsible. In the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, a lot of events in the play are affected by the timing and free will.
Romeo Montague and
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The death of the two lovers could have easily been avoided. This quote from the chorus of the play, “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes/A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their lives . . . ”(5-6), shows that even from the beginning of this play these two lovers were destined to die. It all started because of the wedding between Juliet and Paris. If the Capulets weren’t forcing Juliet to marry Paris, she wouldn’t have gone to Friar Laurence asking for her help and he wouldn’t have given her the potion. But, even with this happening, their plan for Romeo to come save Juliet should have worked. However, as soon as Juliet arrived home she was told that the wedding was going to be moved to a day earlier, so instead of on Thursday, the wedding was going to be on Wednesday. This then caused Juliet to have to take the potion a day earlier, which didn’t leave enough time for the letter about the plan get to Romeo. Part
Romeo and Juliet is widely known to be a tragedy, but what caused the atrocity for which it is so renowned? Some may argue fate was to blame for Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths, that the situations these young lovers faced were depicted as being out of their control. Could Romeo have refused to attend the Capulet masque? Was Romeo destined to duel the raging Tybalt? Did Romeo and Juliet truly have to kill themselves? If one considers the specific circumstances and causes of these situations, the fact that all scenarios are the result of choice rather than chance, and the notion that the characters were never left without options, only one conclusion can be determined. It was unarguably the decisions made by characters, not those made by fate, that were responsible for the tragedy in Romeo and Juliet.
Are the characters governed by fate or free will? Fate means a power that some people believe causes and controls all events, so that you cannot change or control way things will happen. Free will means the ability to decide what to make independently of any outside influence. The different between the two they justify the causes that are in somebody else’s hands or in your own hands. The reason why I picked the background information that supports my hook because life can be influenced by the outcome of what you do regardless of what is in favor. The characters and events in the play were influenced by fate because the path and actions they chose recently reflect what happen later on in the play.
Since we can ultimately make decisions to what we desire, for we all have free will, could Romeo and Juliet thus have done anything different to avoid their death-marked love? Ever since Romeo saw Juliet on page 757, he tells us about how he finds her irresistible and of her beauty that is, “too rich for use, for earth to dear!” And we see on the next page that their love was destined to be. But afterwards, they are in a rush to marry each other, and at the end of day two, the friar and the nurse help the star crossed lovers do exactly that. What if, instead of keeping the marriage a secret, if Romeo and Juliet told their parents about their marriage? If they did this, would the two lords have disregarded their hate for one another’s families, thus accomplishing what the friar hoped that Romeo and Juliet’s marriage would do? And even though Romeo and Juliet kept their marriage a secret from their families, they could have avoided their suicidal actions by avoiding the poisons that were offered to Juliet on pages 821-822 and to Romeo on pages 837-838. For like I said before, the both of them ultimately had the free will to choose to drink the poisons that were given to them. If Juliet didn’t take the sleeping drugs, then Romeo would have saw her to be well and would have stayed in Mantua. If this did happen, then would the nurse and or the friar have helped her to escape from Verona, and Lord Capulet’s plan to have Juliet marry Paris? So, in the end, Romeo and Juliet are the only ones we can wholly place the blame upon for their inevitable
We have now read both Pyramus and Thisbe, and Romeo and Juliet. The question we have yet to answer is what has a greater impact on what happened, destiny, or personal choice? We believe that personal choice affected the characters more because they chose to fall in love, Romeo and Juliet rushed into marriage, Pyramus and Thisbe left home on their own terms, and in both stories, the main characters decided to commit suicide. This is something that cannot be determined by the stars, your choices determine what happens, not some mystical prophecy. Though that is what we believe, it is also believed that destiny has a greater impact because they were doomed from the stars.
Even though they were not allowed to be together, it didn't mean that they had to kill themselves. They thought in that moment that the best idea for them was to run away. They didn't tell anyone and pretended like nothing was going on. Just because Romeo was banished and Juliet was a Capulet meant that they could not see each other, but if they wanted to they could have tried to think of a better idea than running away. They might have to run away in the future if they want to be together but they did not really give anyone a chance to even think about the idea and give it a chance. Throughout their plan, Romeo was supposed to get a letter explaining everything but it was not delivered which resulted in his and Juliet's
One of the most common character tropes is the moody, teenage sibling who’s always in trouble and fighting with the parents. Teenagers are often stereotyped as reckless and emotional. They take too many chances and act like everything is the end of the world. Young adults are constantly experimenting and taking risks, but what is the force behind their actions? During adolescence, the areas in the brain controlling reward processing and control begin to change. According to neuroscientist Laurence Steinburg, the shift creates an imbalance between emotion and restraint (Sukel, 46). The play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, focuses on the teenager, Romeo, during a dramatic period of his life. He faces many difficult situations involving love
...ither.” (3.5.155-156) Juliet would not have to fake fatality if she did not have to marry Paris the next day. If Lord Capulet had not moved the wedding to the next day, then Romeo would have gotten then letter he was originally supposed to receive and Friar Laurence’s plan would have worked out effortlessly. In addition, the father would never allow Juliet to marry Romeo considering he is a Montague, the rival of their family. This made the plan for Juliet to marry Romeo even harder.
Choices determine every outcome, A better way to put it is “What we do in life, echoes in eternity”, essentially every single decision one makes , no matter how minuscule, will always have an impact in one’s life. Fate isn’t real; Fate is a term commonly used by those that refuse to accept that they control their own future. Teenagers ever since the beginning of time were and still are expected to make poor choices due to their age. But once they learn to take responsibility for their actions they become adults. Both Romeo and Juliet make multiple decisions such as marrying, killing and suicide without stepping back and thinking about the consequences. In the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare all the choices made by the star crossed lovers have consequences. The two lovers blame fate for their misfortune. They refuse to believe that fate does not determine the end result, only they can do that.
When the play begins, Romeo chooses to crash the ball. Even before the Capulet ball, Romeo predicts his “untimely death"(1.4,117). Fate did not make him go to the Capulet ball, he decided to go on his own, even though his “mind misgives some consequences”(1.4, 114). Another example of how free will comes to play is when Romeo finds out later on that Juliet his true love is his enemy. A "fear"(1.5.120), is placed in him. Nonetheless, he still continues to pursue the relationship even though he knows it will only end in trouble.
In the very opening of the play the chorus is singing about Romeo and Juliet, and predicts their life together as having a star-crossed conclusion. By already knowing from the beginning that their life has an ill-fated conclusion, we can see how their choices brought them to their death. Romeo and Juliet could see that their life together was not going the way they wanted, because Romeo and Juliet wanted to marry each other but there were many barriers between them. Both Romeo and Juliet had many failed attempts in their efforts to trick fate out of what was ultimately going to happen to them both. Hold! Get you gone, be strong and prosperous in this resolve. I’ll send a friar with speed to Mantua, with my letters to thy lord. (IV, i, 122-124)
Predetermined destiny writes out our stories before we experience them and is essential to Romeo and Juliet. The star-cross’d lovers gig basically fueled the whole love-filled dramatic play. Although, Romeo and Juliet both learn this, the hard way, costing their lives, as their love was fated to end in death, unfortunately. In the prologue, lines 6-11 state, “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life; Whose misadventures piteous overthrows, Do with their death bury their parents’ strife. The fearful passage of their parents’ rage, Which but their children’s end naught could remove” (Beers 807). Due to these lines 6-11, it proves that Romeo and Juliet’s destiny was already written previously in the stars above, and the pair of lovers could do nothing but face it, together, hand in hand, with all that they had left.
Romeo and Juliet made many choices out of their own free will, including an irreversible decision that ended in despair for all characters. “All are punished!”(5.3.305). In the play “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare, the actions of Romeo, the actions of Juliet, and the actions of others prove that free will is more paramount than fate in the plot of the play.
Destiny or fate is a controversially talked about subject that has arised for many years. ‘Destiny is referred to as a predetermined course of events.’ Many people, especially in Shakespearean times, believe that God has a life plan for every individual. A sense of destiny in its oldest human sense is the soldier’s fatalistic image of the ‘bullet that has your name on it’ or the moment when ‘your number comes up’ or a romance that was ‘meant to be.’ Many Greek legends and tales teach the futility or trying to outmanoeuvre an inexorable fate that has been correctly predicted. Today we have people that can ‘predict out future’ whether we nowadays still have the belief in the stars and the ability to read them is another controversial matter. Elizabethan astrology fascinated many prominent Elizabethans. The subject is mentioned in every single one of Shakespeare’s plays. At the time the play Romeo and Juliet was published Robert Burton was the astrologer of the era. In Shakespeare’s plays astrology was often critical to the plots when the actions and events surrounding characters are said to be ‘favoured’ or ‘hindered’ by the stars. In the tempest the main character is said to be based on John Dee, who was a famous astrologer and scholar in the Elizabethan era. Destiny is the idea of necessity ‘everything in the world is conditioned and takes place according to necessity.’ ‘Fatalism is based on the assumption that everything in the world and in peoples lives is predetermined by natural or super natural forces, that God set everything out.’ Destiny also mans ‘dragged by force.’ If Romeo would have stayed in his, not gone to the Capulet’s party, left the party when Capulet saw him would all this of happened? That is the idea of destiny...
Choices made by Hamlet, which ultimately lead to his death, are all guided by his own free will. In mourning his father's death, Hamlet chooses to do so for what others consider to be an excessive amount of time. “But to persever/ In obstinate condolement is a course/ Of impious stubbornness”(I.ii.99-100), according to Claudius. During this period of mourning, Hamlet meets his father’s spirit and promises to avenge his father’s death. However, upon reflection, he questions the validity of the ghost’s message. At this point he carefully goes about choosing a plan of action that will inevitably show that “the king is to blame” (V.ii.340) In following his plan, Hamlet freely chooses to kill Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Ophelia, Laertes, Claudius and himself.
It is a character’s actions that lead up to their grand ending. But what we can’t control, fate, sometimes plays an even bigger role. Hamlet is a man who thinks deep philosophical thoughts that often get in his way. By nature he rarely acts abruptly. He is incapable of creating a bold plan of action and executing it.