Romeo and Juliet: A True Tragedy Essay Sample

William Shakespeare’s story “Romeo and Juliet” is about two people that have

fallen in love, but their families are enemies causing the connection between the two forbidden.

Romeo and Juliet make up a plan to run away together for the sake of their deep love for one another. Juliet consumes a potion to make her appear dead but when her beloved, Romeo is not aware of the plan, he kills himself to be with her forever.  When Juliet awakens she finds her significant other dead, she kills herself. The story ends dreadfully because of how they died, but they did it out of love. So it makes you wonder, was this really a true love story? The story of “Romeo and Juliet” has a variety of conflicts. Some may call it a love story, others, a tragedy, or both, a tragic love story.I believe that it is both, a tragic love story because they loved each other very much and took the risk of leaving their families to be together, they died due to Romeo being unaware of the plan and lack of communication, and the story didn’t end happily ever after unlike many love stories do.

The story begins with the families of Romeo and Juliet, the main characters of the story, having an altercation. After shuffling around they become aware they can't be together because of their families’ rivalry. They were so deeply in love that they made a mutual decision to leave their families to be together. There are many love stories or so called “fairy tales” such as “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty”, and “Snow White” that have similar backstories to where there is something or someone that is trying to prevent the couple from being together. Today there are many couples that face this problem, but they always figure out how to make the relationship work. Romeo and Juliet making a plan to be together shows that they were very devoted and loved each other very much.

As we move more into the story, Romeo has a misperception of Juliet's plan to trick her family. After a few more fragments of the story, it seems that Romeo received the wrong message and ends up killing himself to be with Juliet, who is not dead. Now, couples may perform different acts to show their love to one another. Acts such as acts of kindness and others go as far as harming oneself depending on how toxic the relationship may be. In this case, Romeo wanted to be with Juliet, but after a brawl with Juliet’s cousin, he got banished from the village. Him doing that caused an even bigger barrier, keeping them from being together. This happening caused even more emotional damage to Juliet, already considering the conflict happening between the two families.

Conflict plays a huge role in many stories like this one. Stories like “The Little Mermaid”, “Princess and the Frog”, and “Rapunzel”, all have antagonism to their stories. Most of the antagonizing comes from a person or thing that is trying to prevent the couple from being together. In “Romeo and Juliet” the conflict is two families that are against each other and Juliet discovers that her lover is a part of the opposing family. This part of the story definitely engages and makes the story a bit deeper and makes readers want to read more.

In conclusion, I believe Romeo and Juliet is a tragic romance. I believe this because there were so many segments in the story that highlighted the main idea, which was love can make you do insane things. Yes they loved each other dearly, but there were many misfortune things leading up to an unhappy ending. All in all, the story of Romeo and Juliet can teach the lesson of don’t make rash decisions, think through decisions, and love should not take you as far as killing yourself.