Romeo And Juliet Suicide Essay

Words: 1070
Pages: 5

When it comes to Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, people often remember the star-crossed lovers who fell in love in the midst of feuding families. This feud eventually lead to their untimely deaths leading to the ultimate reconciliation of the two families. No matter the era, teen suicide was a serious and tragic event. The suicide of a person results in the question of who could have prevented the suicide and who evoked it. In Romeo and Juliet, while social pressures and chance may have played a part in their deaths, the young people’s actions were entirely their own. Romeo and Juliet demonstrates how a person who commits suicide is solely responsible for their death through themes of youth, character and the ideology of death in the …show more content…
While both Romeo and Juliet have an ideology of death being a release from reality, it is much clearer to see with Juliet. In the text Juliet says, “If he be married my grave is like to be my wedding bed” (I.V.133). Throughout the play there is an exaggeration of emotions shown in the first act Juliet says this line. Before she has even learned Romeo’s name she says that she would die if Romeo was married. She over exaggerates her blossoming love to Romeo while ignorantly minimizing the impact of death. Later she says, “And death, not Romeo, can take my maidenhead” (III.II.138). Juliet speaks these line after she finds out that she may never see Romeo again. She implores that she would rather die than live without Romeo. This is plainly an unreasonable statement but Juliet does not understand the seriousness of death. In the text it reads, “If everything else fails, at least I have the power to take my own life” (III.V.243). Juliet sees death as a type of backup option. She believes that if nothing works out the way she wants it to she can simply kill herself to make it all go away. Through all of this talk of death, Juliet got exactly that. She so strongly believed that death was the remedy to her hardships that she eventually killed herself. Juliet was driven to suicide because she humanized death due to her ideals that lead her to believe that death was a