Juliet Tragic Hero Essay Example

William Shakespeare in his work “Romeo and Juliet”, an Aristotelian tragedy, tells about a beautiful, pure and sincere love, which unfortunately ends tragically. This is a narrative, recounting about tender love of young people. Enmity, strife and blood feuds are trying to resist their nascent sympathy. But the heroes do not imagine life without eachother and are ready to die, just to be together. In Shakespeare’s play, it is clear that Juliet is a tragic hero because she was willing to sacrifice her life in order to be with Romeo. Therefore, her tragic flaw is her loyalty and excessive devotion to him. Not only does she love Romeo so much and is loyal to him, it is to the point that she could not stand to be without him.

Juliet is presented as a tragic hero due to her foolish and imprudent actions. As we already know, the Capulets and Montagues have been in a never ending feud for centuries. Having or showing unaffected simplicity of nature or absence of artificiality, Juliet makes an unsophisticated and ingenious decision to go against her family name and fall in love with her family’s archrivals . “Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, but be sworn my love,  And I’ll no longer be a Capulet” emphasises that Juliet is asking Romeo to deny his family for her love. She adds, however, that if he will not, she will deny her family in order to be with him if he merely tells her that he loves her. Additionally, this explains how Juliet is willing to give up her whole life as she knows it to be with a man that she knows is not wanted or even liked by her family. We must understand how grave of a decision that is for a woman in Elizabethan England, a patriarchal society, where women were mere objects and were by culture and nurture supposed to adhere to the demands of the father and the hierarchy of the family. To shame one’s family was equal to social suicide, for a young woman to stand bold and make these sorts of claims just explains to us how emotionally involved she must be to this. However, this shows us how naive and irresponsible Juliet is because she is making such a predominant decision over a man she has only just met. Shakespeare teaches us how it is so easy to make rash decisions and choose the wrong path in life.

Juliet’s excessive love for Romeo leads her to become a tragic hero. “Whats in a name that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” reveals that Juliet believes that love stems from one’s inner identity and that the feud between the Montague’s and Capulets is the product of the outer identity, based only on names. She thinks of Romeo in individual terms and thus her love for him overrides her family‘s hatred for the Montague name. The word “rose“ has connotations to love and romance because it is the colour red, which reveals how much she admires Romeo and the unconditional love she feels for him without any limitations. Shakespeare is teaching us how love can transform our character and how it can prompt us to change our personalities, which in this case leads to the tragic downfall of the “Star-crossed lovers”  mentioned in the prologue.

Shakespeare exposes how love has indoctrinated Juliet, which ultimately leads to her demise. This is exemplified when she says, “oh happy dagger!” The use of the oxymoron “happy dagger “shows the complexity of feeling here, as she is contented to die because it allows her to be with her“true love.” The use of the adjective “happy” illustrates how Juliet welcomes her death and believes that the “dagger”, the instrument of her death will enable her to reunite with Romeo. Also, the words “happy” and “dagger” juxtapose each other. Additionally, the use of the exclamation mark heightens Juliet‘s emotions – both elated, overall in a state of turmoil, and distraught- which makes the audience realise how she has been manipulated  by love and how ready she is for her death. Perhaps Shakespeare is trying to reveal how being naive can make us think irrationally to extremes. This is because Juliet thinks that once she has killed herself she will join Romeo in heaven, however she is too ignorant to realise that committing suicide is a mortal sin meaning that the two lovers cannot get redemption or forgiveness for the sin they have committed. Furthermore, this is ironic because instead of joining Romeo in heaven, they will both be suffering in hell. Alternatively, it is possible that fate has a part to play in Juliet’s immoral decisions, however  there was always a choice to be made and these ill – considered decisions all contribute to making Juliet a tragic hero. This is mentioned and foreshadowed when Friar Lawrence says, “these violent delights have violent ends.”.

To conclude, Juliet‘s loyalty and excessive devotion to Romeo leads her to become a tragic hero because if she hadn’t had met him in the first place, she wouldn’t have had such a fatal and tragic end.