Old Man And The Sea

Submitted By alexisalana13
Words: 1150
Pages: 5

Theodore Roethke once said, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see…” This means that when times are rough people begin to see things the way they really are. This is proven to be true in The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
Romeo and Juliet begins with a street fight between the Montague’s and the Capulet’s who are enemies. The Prince of Verona intervenes and declares that any further break of the peace will be punishable by death. Then Romeo sees Juliet at a large dance at her father's house, and then they fall in love instantly. After they meet, they each discover that the other is a member of an opposing family, the Montagues and the Capulets. The two families have been feuding for many years. That does not stop Romeo from secretly visiting Juliet. After the dance, he leaves his friends and goes to the Capulet's garden. There, under Juliet's balcony, Romeo overhears Juliet confess that she loves him. Mercutio and Tybalt are about to fight when Romeo enters. Romeo tries to avoid the fight because he is now married to a Capulet. Mercutio cannot stand Romeo listening to Tybalt's cruelty and draws his sword to fight. Tybalt stabs Mercutio under Romeo's arm and leaves. Mercutio ends up dying soon after. Romeo kills Tybalt and the Prince exiles Romeo after Benvolio tells the story of what happened. Juliet does not want to marry Paris, so to escape the marriage she goes to Friar Lawrence, who gives her a potion that will make her appear dead. While she is “dead” Friar will write to Romeo explaining the plan to him and when she wakes he will be there to take her. Romeo never gets the letter and hears from someone else that Juliet is dead. He immediately goes to the Capulets tomb, with the poison that he bought from the apothecary, planning to kill himself. Romeo meets Paris outside of Juliet’s tomb and after a fight he kills Paris. He then goes inside the tomb and drinks the poison killing himself minutes before Juliet wakes up. When she wakes up she sees him dead and kills herself with his knife. The death of Romeo and Juliet makes the Montague and Capulet families realize that their feud was pointless. In William Shakespeare’s play, evil is symbolized as the hatred between the Montagues and Capulets. Their life long feud has caused violence, death, and chaos throughout Verona. They have created an evil environment that violence may erupt at the time a Capulet encounters a Montague. An example is when Benvolio and his men encounter Tybalt’s, which begins a vicious brawl that could only be stopped by the Prince. Romeo, the son of Montague and his wife, secretly marries Juliet, a daughter of Capulet. He is exiled for slaying Juliet's cousin, Tybalt, in a duel. Romeo commits suicide when he hears false information about Juliet’s death. Conflict is also show in Romeo and Juliet between the Montagues and the Capulets. They have been feuding for a long time and finally come to realize that the feud is pointless when Romeo and Juliet end up dead.
In The Old Man and the Sea a fisherman named Santiago, has gone 84 days without catching a fish. He is so unlucky that his young friend, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen. On the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone, taking his skiff far onto the Gulf Stream. He sets out his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big fish takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff farther and farther out. On the third day at sea, the marlin begins to circle the skiff so Santiago kills him with the harpoon. He straps the marlin to the side of his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed. On his journey back home he meets up with sharks who are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. Santiago