Control Over Life Decisions Individuals ultimately have control over their life decisions demonstrated in the film Romeo and Juliet and other adaptations. Juliet, in particular, is caught in a world where her parents influence many aspects of her existence. Yet, when it comes to the heart, she boldly asserts her own decisions. Love was the one thing she had a grudge on and even argued with her parents against. Surrendering entirely to her parents' control would have meant a life dictated by their desires, rather than her own. In each adaptation, the guardians are depicted as wanting what's best for their child or the individual under their care. Despite the societal norms of the time, they did not force Juliet into marriage but rather encouraged …show more content…
Lord Capulet emphasizes the metaphor of getting Juliet’s heart, implying that Juliet’s agreement toward this marriage is essential and that in the beginning, he thought Juliet deserved the freedom and right to make her own decisions. Lord Capulet initially favors Juliet's match with Count Paris due to their family ties, because he is a Capulet. However, Juliet risks everything to be with Romeo, defying her parents' expectations and highlighting her willingness to follow her heart. From the start, Juliet has decided for herself, as Lord Capulet remains unaware of Romeo's existence. Throughout the story, Juliet keeps her love for Romeo a secret, knowing the consequences of a feud starting if this secret is revealed. Even until the end of the movie, Juliet has not spoken about Romeo to anyone. Many may perceive Lord and Lady Capulet as pushing Juliet into marriage with Count Paris. However, they were unaware of Juliet’s love for Romeo from the beginning, making her parents think that Count Paris was Juliet’s only option. They wanted the best for her and that she got the life they thought she
Another character who is responsible for the deaths of the lovers in Romeo and Juliet is Lord Capulet. Knowing that her father would disagree with her being married to Romeo, a Montague, Romeo and Juliet were forced to keep their love a secret. In the beginning of the play, Lord Capulet tells Paris that Juliet is still to young to woo and that he should wait two years. However, later in the play, he tells Paris that Juliet will be married to him in two days. After hearing that she will be wed in two days, Juliet goes to Friar Lawrence asking for help. If Lord Capulet did not force Juliet to marry Paris, she would not have had to fake her death. The plan that Friar Lawrence devised to prevent the wedding led to death of Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet is set in an Italian city named Verona. Romeo is the son of of Montague, a powerful family patriarch, and Juliet is the daughter of Capulet, another powerful patriarch. There’s one problem with this. Capulet and Montague hate each other. There’s another problem. The story was set in a time where men were thought of as superior to women. It was not unusual for a father to marry his daughter to another man just for the political status. This makes it impossible for Romeo to marry Juliet peacefully. In today’s world, Capulet’s actions would not be regarded as good parenting, so that is why, in our eyes, Capulet seems like a bad father, but there is more to his bad side. He tried to marry Juliet off to a kinsman of the prince just for the political status, but his bad parenting also harmed Juliet in another way. He let his anger get the best of him in most cases, and by doing this, it made Juliet keep secret from him. So, by being stubborn, self-absorbed, and hot-tempered, he influenced Romeo and Juliet to kill themselves.
Lord Capulet is a very trusting. He trusts Paris with his daughter, knowing that he would be a good husband to her. “Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender / Of my child’s love. I think she will be ruled / In all respects by me. Nay, more, I doubt it not-“ (3.5.13-15). He believes that Paris will keep his word and love Juliet. After the death of Tybalt, he is sorrowful, and I think that is one of the reasons he trusts that Juliet will agree with this marriage. When Romeo, at the beginning of the play, shows up at the Capulet party, Tybalt is angered. He tells Capulet that he would kill Romeo if he had his permission. Even though Romeo was of the Montague family, he still trusted him not to do anything bad at the party.
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
When Juliet is told of her parents plans to wed her to Count Paris, she expresses her reluctance to accept the proposal. Juliet, hoping her parents would understand and consider her desires, is shocked when Lord Capulet reacts in pure rage and says, “...Hang thee, young baggage! Disobedient wretch! / I tell thee what: get thee to church o’ Thursday, / Or never after look me in the face. / Speak not. Reply not. Do not answer” (3.5.160-164). With greed blinding his eyesight, Juliet is no longer seen by Capulet as a human with a heart and soul, but is rather an object, with a price tag hung over her head. Lord Capulet’s inhuman outlook upon her banishes any hope Juliet had of her parents understanding her relationship with Romeo, and drives her to take risky decisions in order to fulfill her heart. The derogatory, and demeaning language Lord Capulet uses to express his anger over Juliet’s defiance of marriage, can be clearly attributed as the sole cause of Juliet’s desperation to escape the grasp of Lord Capulet and take the perilous decisions to wager death in order to find sanctuary in
In the play of Romeo and Juliet the way Romeo and Juliet act towards their parents is astoundingly rebellious and disobedient. Throughout the play both characters lie and disobey their parents. The way that Romeo acts towards both of his parents is so rebellious that it ends up getting him banished. Juliet disobeys her family and the nurse so much that none of them ever have the slightest clue of the plan which ends up killing her. If either character had thought out their actions through the entirety of the play and told a parent what is unfolding, both of them could have lived. The way that Romeo and Juliet both interact with their parents is a web of lies. The way both families feel toward their children is love
These two scenes introduce Paris as Capulet's pick for Juliet's husband and, more broadly, establish the theme of parental influence over a child's happiness. In the last scene, it was shown how the hatred Capulet and Montague bear for each other flows down to affect the rest of their households and results in violent conflict, but here the influence is more subtle and mundane. Paris is a nobleman and a worthy choice to be Juliet's husband; there is no reason why she should not want to marry him. Capulet himself defers to her ability to choose for herself ("My will to her consent is but a part"), but his power to force her into a marriage if he feels it necessary is implicitly present. It is significant that Paris speaks to Juliet's father before he ever shows her any indication of his feelings, and apparently before he even gets to know her particularly well. Lady Capulet, for her part, offers her entire support to her husband's plan for their daughter, and begins to put pressure on Juliet to think about Paris as a husband before Juliet begins to think about marriage at all on her own. Juliet even says to Lady Capulet in scene 3 how important her influence is to her in this matter: "I'll look to like, looking liking move; / But no more deep will I endart mine eye / Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
Many parents feel as if their job is to protect their children from any harm or difficult decisions that may come their way. In the screen write Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, the parents are in control of almost every aspect of their own child’s life. Romeo and Juliet takes place in the fourteenth century in Verona, Italy. Romeo is a Montague, Juliet is a thirteen-year-old Capulet, and Paris is related to Prince Escalus. Also, the Montague and Capulet families despise each other. Consequently, Romeo and Juliet fall in love when they first meet each other at a party. Because of the family feud, they cannot let their parents know about their love, so Juliet and Romeo marry in secret. Also, Juliet’s father, Lord Capulet, promises Juliet’s
upon them, but they have a subtle yet firm grasp on their children’s. lives. They use this grasp to guide, not to force, their children. However, in the time of Romeo and Juliet, the parents had control over the household, the father more so than the mother. They would tell their children how to live.
To most, it is a mystery whether the outcome of one’s life is dependent on the choices, decisions and actions that are made throughout that lifetime, or if it is simply predetermined and a matter of fate. Does man have any control over his life, or is he just acting as a pawn, experiencing a predetermined sequence of events as they come? Do the decisions he makes and the actions he takes affect the outcomes of events later in his life? And perhaps even more concerning, since they are out of his control, do the decisions and actions of others have an effect on the outcome of his life? In the play Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare explores these ideas and questions in great depth. At a quick glance, it seems that the tragic death of the
He did not give much thought on how Juliet feels about the marriage and agrees to marry the two even though Juliet had not given him consent. For example, when Paris asks Capulet if Juliet would love him; Capulet responds, "Of my child 's love: I think she will be ruled. In all respects by me; nay, more, I doubt it not." (4.3.13-14). Capulet’s relationship with Juliet is superficial; he does not understand or know his daughter well. By creating the wedding, he causes Juliet to become desperate as she would be marrying someone she doesn’t love. To add to the matter, instead of trying to understand his daughter’s perspective, he becomes aggressive and gives her with an ultimatum. Capulet shouts, “Disobedient wretch! I tell thee what: get thee to church o 'Thursday, Or never after look me in the face.” (3.5.160-163). By forcing Juliet into marriage, she becomes desperate and causes her to begin considering death as a way out. "I 'll to the friar, to know his remedy; If all else fail, myself have power to die." (3.5.241-242). Capulet’s controlling and aggressive parenting forces Juliet to marry someone she does not love. Furthermore, this causes Juliet to starts considering suicide as a way out. Capulet’s actions to forcefully marry Juliet to Paris brings her death because it results in the Friar’s potion plan which would cause the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. If Capulet did not
For survivors of traumatic events, the trauma itself is often only the beginning. While some are relatively unaffected, many others will develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, an affliction that haunts its victims with terrifying memories, nightmares, and panic attacks. (For a comprehensive list of symptoms and diagnostic criteria, the reader may refer to the DSM-IV, relevant portions of which may be found online (7).) The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 3.6 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 54 suffer from PTSD; 30 percent of those who have spent time in war zones - one million veterans of Vietnam alone - are affected (6). PTSD is treated with several forms of psychotherapy, including exposure therapy, centered around a controlled confrontation of frightening stimuli. While medication may treat co-occurring depression, anxiety, or insomnia (6), pharmacological agents targeting PTSD remain unavailable. In part, this is because researchers have only begun to describe the underlying neurobiology. Several recent studies have pointed to the brain structure known as the amygdala as a central player, but questions remain: How does this small structure "recognize" danger? How does it create emotional memories? What causes recurrence of these memories?
Although Capulet wanted the best for Juliet, he didn't give a thought on how she felt and had forced her to marry Paris which had caused problems that led to her tragic end. She didn't want to marry someone who she did not love and wanted to escape this marriage. Her method of escape was death. Capulet's controlling actions appeared as early as Act I Scene 2, when he was arranging Juliet's marriage to Paris without her consent. Paris wondered if Juliet would like him and Capulet responded with, "Of my child's love: I think she will be ruled. In all respects by me; nay, more, I doubt it not." (IV, 3, ln. 13-14). stating that he doesn't just think Juliet will like him but that he knows she will like him. When Juliet refuses to marry Paris, he shouted, "To go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church, Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither." (V, 3, ln. 154-155). making her agree to go to the church. Although she did agree to go, her thought of, "I'll to the friar, to know his remedy; If all else fail, myself have power to die." (V, 3, ln. 241-242). showed that she did not plan on marrying Paris and that she would die first. Juliet's arrangement to Paris had brought her death because it had resulted in the potion plan which had caused Romeo and Juliet to die. If Capulet had never forced Juliet to marry Paris, she would have been living happily with Romeo.
as the ‘ancient grudge’ between the families has caused. Romeo and Juliet to take their lives partly due to the inadequate parenting from Lord and Lady Capulet and Lord and Lady Montague. They both have an adequate carer who is forced into taking the main roles. as the parents of the children.
Juliet’s arranged marriage with Paris, as well as the ancient feud between Capulets and Montagues, eventually contributed to the deaths of their children. In Act 1 Scene 2, Paris asks Capulet, ‘But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?’ which shows that Capulet and Paris are discussing Juliet’s possible marriage without consulting her, perhaps implying they think she is too nave to decide on her future. They are arranging her marriage for her, which implies that men are very controlling of women’s lives, especially those of their daughters. The scene establishes how Juliet is subject to parental influence, and how she is very constrained since her father can force her to marry whoever he wants. Juliet’s status as a woman leaves her with no power or choice in the decision of whom she should marry.