Romeo and Juliet by Williams Shakespeare

As in Romeo and Juliet, some powerful external force is present in The Sound of Waves and seems to be driving the events on, twisting them into various shapes. In Romeo and Juliet, there is the motif of stars, or fate, which turns the wheel of events. In Juliet’s monologue at the beginning of Act III Scene ii, she says “Give me my Romeo, and when he shall die,/Take him and cut him out in little stars,/And he will make the face of heav’n so fine” indicating that there are outwardly forces living amongst the stars that guides their path. In Act V Scene I Line 25, upon hearing of Juliet’s death, Romeo cries “Is it e’en so? Then I defy you stars!” Yet again, this shows that something among the stars or perhaps the stars themselves is twisting the path and shrouding the road ahead with the mist of fate. On page fifteen to sixteen of The Sound of Waves, Shinji prays to the stars (God) in the hope that He can change the future. On page twenty-one, Shinji’s prayer is answered. He accidentally left his money on the beach and Hatsue, his loved one, the girl of his dreams, had to find it. This may be a sign that fate is acting in their favor. However, in Romeo and Juliet, fate definitely does not work towards the benefit of the young couple who end up dying a few days after they meet. It is not always clear on whose side fate is on. On page forty in The Sound of Waves, however, fate is definitely acting in the favor of Hatsue. Yasuo accosts Hatsue in the dead of night and tries to take advantage of her. Unfortunately for him, fate was present through the form of a hornet when it stings Yasuo, allowing Hatsue to run. When Yasuo catches Hatsue, “the hornet had stung him again, this time on the nape of the neck.” What are the chances that the h...

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... himself just seconds before Juliet was due to wake up. However, in The Sound of Waves, everything works out well for the young couple. Fate makes Chikoyo threaten never to come back to the island unless Shinji and Hatsue are happy together and Hatsue’s father finally allows her daughter and Shinji to be together. On page seventy-two, there is another example of a powerful outwardly force that was guiding the couple through the misfortunes (“the gods had indeed given him everything he had prayed for”) and again on page seventy-four (“She was thinking it was her picture that had protected Shinji”). In both Romeo and Juliet and The Sound of Waves, fate acts as a catalyst, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. The two different outcomes of these two stories show the reader the two opposite faces of fate.

Works Cited

The Sound of Waves

Romeo and Juliet