Sunday, November 7, 2010

What are some quotes you could use to argue that Romeo and Juliet are to blame for their own deaths?

each
commit separate suicides in act 5, scene
3, both believing the other is dead. Having each taken
their lives willingly,
they are both technically responsible for their deaths. The downfalls of

bothandare their youthful impetuousness, which causes them to fall so hopelessly in love
that
they conclude that life without the other is unbearable.


Romeo's own death is
foreshadowed in act 3, scene 3. In a
conversation with , Romeo likens his banishment from Verona
(Romeo having
been exiled by King Escalus for killing ) and physical separation from Juliet to
a
form of living death:

And sayst thou
yet that exile is not
death?

Hadst thou no poison mixed,
no sharp-ground knife,


No sudden mean of death, though
ne'er so mean,

But banish¨d to
kill me?Banish¨d!


In act 4, scene 1, Juliet and the
friar devise a
plan to fake her death in order to avoid her planned marriage to(Juliet and
Romeo
are already secretly married at this point). Juliet takes a sleeping
potion and is placed in the
tomb of the Capulet family. Having not received
the message from the friar about this plan,
Romeo believes Juliet is actually
dead. He buys poison from an apothecary and kills himself with
it at the base
of Juliet's supposedly dead body. In act 5, scene 3, Romeo presents abefore
he
commits suicide, which is essentially a long farewell to his own life and
that of Juliet. He
says, "O, here / Will I set up my everlasting rest,"
meaning in this spot, himself and
Juliet will be together forever. Romeo says
that his lips "seal with a righteous kiss / A
dateless bargain to engrossing
death." In other words, true love's kiss has forged a deal
to be with
together with Juliet in death forever.

Moments later, Juliet
wakes
up from her potion-induced slumber and finds Romeo dead. She kisses him
in order to take some of
the poison from his mouth: "I will kiss thy lips, /
Haply some poison yet doth hang on
them, / To make me die with a
restorative". In this way they can be connected in death and
by the same
means. She then stabs herself with Romeo's dagger, yet another morbid connection
to
him. Juliet says "O happy dagger" meaning she is welcoming this fate in
order to find
eternal rest with her lover.

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