Humans have many ambitions in life, yet most people’s ambitions fall into one spectrum. This spectrum? Love. People often express their desire for love, yet don’t realize that love is carried with them throughout their lives. In today’s society, ‘love’ is a commonly used term to describe a relationship based on affection for another person. However, love has many levels of complexities. Ancient greeks recognized the various forms love can take. Some of which include eros, storge, and philia. William Shakespeare, in his classic drama “Romeo and Juliet,” and other authors use eros, storge, and philia to explore the complexities of love and its effects.
Eros, defined as an intimate, romantic love, is often what comes to mind when one speaks of
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Philia is considerably a platonic love, a love where physical attraction is not necessary. Shakespeare doesn’t fail to incorporate philia in “Romeo and Juliet”: “Why, is not this better than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable. Now art thou Romeo” (2.4.75-76). Prior to this quote, Romeo and his friend Mercutio took part in a playful banter between each other. What Mercutio intends to say is that Romeo in a way has matured, he often spent his time in distress over his unrequited love with Rosaline. Now that he has moved past that, Romeo is now what Mercutio believes to be the “true” Romeo. This is a form of philia considering Mercutio’s relationship with Romeo. Mercutio mentions his friend’s new attitude with a sense of admiration, praising him for being able to trade his tendencies of moping for being able to exert his playfulness. Overall, Mercutio cares for Romeo and wishes for him to be happy. Along with Shakespeare, William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” has its share of philia. He writes, “Ralph tried indignantly to remember. There was something good about a fire. Something overwhelmingly good. ‘Ralph’s told you often enough,’ said Piggy moodily. ‘How else are we going to be rescued?’” (Chapter 10). To summarize the plot of “Lord of the Flies”, a group of young boys survive a plane crash and are stranded on an island together. At this point of time, the boys have broken off into their own separate tribes. Ralph, who initially assumed leadership, is undergoing a mental crisis and is having trouble recalling things he would usually value. Piggy, his companion, fills in the blanks for him. Although they were unlikely to become friends in the beginning of the story, the two later bond through circumstances that isolate them. How does this relate to philia? The pair’s relationship is based upon their shared goodwill. While the other boys on the island choose to spend
In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Yukio Mishima’s The Sound of Waves, the secondary characters play an essential role in the book. In Romeo and Juliet by an English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, Friar Lawrence is an important secondary character who designs solutions for Romeo and Juliet and brings the play into the dramatic results. The failure of his plan causes the tragedy of death for both main characters at the end of the story. In The Sound of Waves, Shinji Kubo, a young and poor fisherman in Uta-Jima falls in love with Hatuse, a rich man’s daughter. Shinji and Hatsue try to be together throughout the book, but encounter many difficulties with their neighbors. Shinji’s mother tries to help Shinji and Hatsue by asking many people and going to shrines to beg the gods for help to get them together.
A character goes through many changes that depend on the kind of events they experience. The play “Romeo and Juliet” written by William Shakespeare, uses different tones and language that shows the readers that Juliet, a Protagonist, changes over time, proving the idea that she is a dynamic character. At the beginning of the play, we are introduced to a young, innocent and inexperienced girl, Juliet the daughter of Lord Capulet . She has not yet seen the real world and is raised by the person she trusts most, her nurse. Juliet begins as a naive child who has thought little about love and marriage, but she grows up quickly upon falling in love with Romeo, the son of her family’s great enemy. Due to the fact that Juliet is a girl in an aristocratic family, she has none of the freedom Romeo has to rome around the city, climb over walls in the middle of the night, or get into swordfights. As we begin to learn more about the character of Juliet, we learn that Juliet is not the girl she used to be anymore. She is more courageous and willing to break the rules. She goes against her and her family beliefs. In the beginning of the play she obeys her parents. But as the play descends Juliet is disregarding of what her parents say. She is no longer the innocent girl she use to be. Shakespeare use of language helps the reader to see the change in a character that makes them a dynamic character.
Romeo & Juliet Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy, but it did not have to be. Many things could have been done to prevent their deaths. Many characters contributed to their deaths. The sole character that was responsible for their deaths is Friar Lawrence. Friar Lawrence is responsible for the deaths of the lovers because he was secretive with their relationship, he was unable communicate effectively, and he had a cowardly persona.
Romeo and Juliet is known as one of the greatest love stories, but it has its fair share of tragedy as well. The story riddles with themes throughout. Love is the first theme and there is no greater love than the love Romeo and Juliet share. Shakespeare offers his audiences just as much hate as love in Romeo and Juliet. The families of both Romeo and Juliet involve themselves in centuries of feuding. The ongoing feud between the Montagues and Capulets drives Romeo and Juliet into a life of secrecy, which ultimately causes their deaths. Youth is another theme and ties directly to how young both Romeo and Juliet are both in their age and their relationship. The story of Romeo and Juliet uses sex as a theme as well although not in the intimate details of more modern stories. The two lovers concerns are not with the wishes of their warring families, they just want to be together “Deny thy father and refuse thy name / Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn by my love / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet” (2.2.34-36). Love is the first theme Shakespeare displays in this play.
Psappo’s poetry was the model from which ancient cultures defined love. Her views on love have influenced many works of literature, including The Aeneid of Virgil. Love is an uncontrollable force that strikes an individual from the outside and can occur suddenly as well as unexpectedly. Love is often depicted as a positive emotion that causes people to feel blissful, but this can easily turn into furor; furor is the aspect of love associated with violence and insanity. Dido’s love for Aeneas exemplifies the internal turmoil that afflicts individuals when they are deprived of the love that they crave so ardently. Virgil accomplishes this through the incorporation of the symbol of fire and through the platonic metaphor of the war between reason and appetite in his work.
Throughout the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, various types of love are portrayed. According to some of the students of Shakespeare, Shakespeare himself had accumulated wisdom beyond his years in matters pertaining to love (Bloom 89). Undoubtedly, he draws upon this wealth of experience in allowing the audience to see various types of love personified. Shakespeare argues that there are several different types of love, the interchangeable love, the painful love and the love based on appearances, but only true love is worth having. The first type of love the audience is introduced to is the interchangeable love of Benvolio.
The Symposium, The Aeneid, and Confessions help demonstrate how the nature of love can be found in several places, whether it is in the mind, the body or the soul. These texts also provide with eye-opening views of love as they adjust our understanding of what love really is. By giving us reformed spectrum of love, one is able to engage in introspective thinking and determine if the things we love are truly worthy of our sentiment.
“Here’s to my love! Drinks. O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.” (V.iii.119-120). This is a quote out of Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet detailing rash decisions of people madly infatuated. In this play, two lovers (Romeo and Juliet) have a relationship that is shown to be quite shallow. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses idioms, allusions, and monologues to show that Romeo and Juliet have a shallow relationship.
The proverb goes that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” In the classic play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, this proverb reflects Friar Lawrence’s preeminent role in the tragedy of the two teenage lovers, each belonging to feuding families in Verona. Though Friar Lawrence’s motives are filled with good intentions, he does not always use the moral approach to reach them. In his play, Friar Lawrence is the most responsible character for Romeo and Juliet’s deaths because he is not only political, but also irresponsible and deceptive.
Young love; a questionable topic since the early days of mankind. Even after centuries have passed, many still wonder whether it is considered true love or just plain lust. This mystery reincarnates itself through Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The question that arises in this tragic love story of young, supposedly star-crossed lovers is who is to be truly blamed for their deaths within the first two acts? With a story as complex as this one, the blame can fall on various characters. However, the most evident characters to take the fall are Benvolio, Romeo and Friar Lawrence.
Love, in classical Greek literature, is commonly considered a prominent theme. Love, in present days, always appears in the categories of books, movies, music, etc. Interpreted differently by different people, Love turns into a multi-faceted being. In Plato’s work Symposium, Phaedrus, Pausania, Eryximachus, Aristophane and Agathon, each of them presents a speech to either praise or definite Love. Phaedrus first points out that Love is the primordial god; Pausanias brings the theme of “virtue” into the discussion and categorizes Love into “good” one or “bad” one; Eryximachus introduces the thought of “moderation’ and thinks that Love governs such fields as medicine and music; Aristophanes draws attention to the origin and purposes of Love; Agathon enunciates that the correct way to present an eulogy is first to praise its nature and gifts.
First, to get back on track, it is important to look at the three separate levels of love, and it would make sense to first look at eros. Eros is a romantic love, the kind of love one would have towards a beautiful object, or person. It is that sexual drive that is most apparent at the early stages of a relationship. This could be considered to be the first definition people would think of when questioned about the meaning of love. In fact in a more layman attempt at understanding eros one can think of the feeling one has during a crush, where a person’s affections are aimed at a single individual.
Love is a concept that has puzzled humanity for centuries. This attachment of one human being to another, not seen as intensely in other organisms, is something people just cannot wrap their heads around easily. So, in an effort to understand, people write their thoughts down. Stories of love, theories of love, memories of love; they all help us come closer to better knowing this emotional bond. One writer in particular, Sei Shōnagon, explains two types of lovers in her essay "A Lover’s Departure": the good and the bad.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a Renaissance poet and playwright who wrote and published the original versions of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, and often called England’s national poet. Several of his works became extremely well known, thoroughly studied, and enjoyed all over the world. One of Shakespeare’s most prominent plays is titled The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. In this tragedy, the concept that is discussed and portrayed through the characters is love, as they are recognized as being “in love”. The general umbrella of love encompasses various kinds of love such as romantic love, the love of a parent for a child, love of one’s country, and several others. What is common to all love is this: Your own well-being is tied up with that of someone (or something) you love… When love is not present, changes in other people’s well being do not, in general, change your own… Being ‘in love’ infatuation is an intense state that displays similar features: … and finding everyone charming and nice, and thinking they all must sense one’s happiness. At first glance it seems as though Shakespeare advocates the hasty, hormone-driven passion portrayed by the protagonists, Romeo and Juliet; however, when viewed from a more modern, North-American perspective, it seems as though Shakespeare was not in fact endorsing it, but mocking the public’s superficial perception of love. Shakespeare’s criticism of the teens’ young and hasty love is portrayed in various instances of the play, including Romeo’s shallow, flip-flop love for Rosaline then Juliet, and his fights with Juliet’s family. Also, the conseque...
Romeo and Juliet, the tragic play by William Shakespeare, centers around the love story between Romeo, the young heir of the Montagues, and Juliet, the daughter of the house of Capulet. This story starts off with two opposing families of royalty, the Montagues and the Capulets. These families have a deep seeded hatred for one another that traces way back into their family’s history. Shakespeare takes his audience though a heart churning tale of two star crossed lovers. From the start Romeo and Juliet’s love seemed to be an uphill battle that they would never win even with help. The relationship of Romeo and Juliet is a tragic love story of two star crossed lovers trying to find a way to love each other.