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Tung Tran
Ms. Giovannetti
Love is found in many forms. It is found in the bonds between families, friends, and humanity. It
is a driving force behind what inspires people to continue living, and helps motivate them to achieve a
certain goal. Many authors write about stories, all of which centers around love. Love is a universal theme
that acts as an important driving force behind many aspects of everyday life. Although it is a positive
emotion and drives humanity to always try to improve, love is also a double-bladed knife that could harm
those it affects through blind devotion and secrecy. Stories such as Romeo and Juliet, Pyramus and
Thisbe, and Duty help show that love is responsible of the many actions of a lovesick individual. Love
can make an individual act in erratic ways that could, in their perspective, benefit those they love,
Many types of love are found in Romeo and Juliet, but the most common is tragic love. One
minor character in Romeo and Juliet is Mercutio, friend of Romeo, who dies for Romeos honor. In Act 3,
Romeo and Mercutio exclaims, Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up. Come, sir, your passado! (Scene I
Line 79). Clearly, Romeo does not want to fight, so Mercutio duels Tybalt in his place because he does
not want Romeo to lose his honor. Mercutio is stabbed by Tybalt because he is willing to do anything for
his friend due to his love for him, although it, predictably ends in tragedy. Romeo and Juliet is not the
only piece of text to have tragedy that was brought on by love in it; Pyramus and Thisbe also contains this
type of tragic love. The story is about two lovers that can not meet each because of their parents, but when
they do meet, tragedy strikes. Many people believe that Shakespeare copied from the myth, which means
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that such tragic love is also present in it. One example could be found on line 149, when the author wrote,
She placed the daggers point beneath her breast, (Mandelbaum). Thisbe proceeds to stab herself,
because she does not want to live without Pyramus. She exemplifies tragic love because she shows that
sometimes people love each other enough, causing them to be willing to do anything to be with the other,
including in death. Sometimes, if a person loves an individual so much, they are willing to take any
measures for that person in order to make them happy or to be with them, even if it ends in tragedy.
Love is not always about tragedy, but there are certain aspects of it that could lead to tragic ends,
such as forbidden love, when given into. In Romeo and Juliet, the whole story revolves around a
forbidden love between two teens from two feuding families. Juliet, who starts to realize the impossibility
of an open love for them, says, Thou art thyself, though not a Montague, (Act 1 Scene II Line 97) when
she was at her balcony. Juliet is brooding about how she wishes Romeo was from any other family other
than the Montagues. This goes to show that Romeo and Juliet are in love with each other, but their
families are not allowing them to love each other; they, however, still meet in secret and even marries in
secret. This does not play out well, and ends up with the death of both teens, showing that forbidden love
could lead to tragedy. Regardless, Juliet is not the only girl in the Capulet family to love a Montague. In
Duty, it is revealed that Lady Capulet is in love with Lord Montague. At the end of the story, Lady
Capulet says, Him I loved. Him I did not marry, (Berkman 229), which tells the audience that although
she loves him, but she did not end up marrying Lord Montague. She is the opposite of Juliet because
although she has a forbidden love with Lord Montague, she sees more importance in her familial duties,
which includes marrying Lord Capulet, while Juliet ends up marrying Romeo. The continuation of her
appearance and success in raising Juliet goes to show that suppressing the forbidden feelings and taking a
traditional role can save an individual from certain fatal destinies. Love, especially forbidden love, when
acted upon, can make people do things that they do not usually, or are not supposed to, do, such as loving
Love, often, cannot appear in obvious manifestations, instead, more in secret, which leads it to be the
main cause rebellious behavior. For instance, in Act 1 of Romeo and Juliet, the two young lovers are both
obedient children to their own respective families; however, when they meet each other, they fall madly
in love. Since their families are feuding, they are forced to keep their love a secret. This is demonstrated
when Nurse said, Have you got to leave to go to shrift today? (Act 2 Scene V, Line 65). This is a form
of secrecy because Juliet told her parents that she is going to the church to confess, when in reality, she is
actually going to church to marry Romeo. Juliet shows signs of rebellion against her parents because of
her secret love interest, therefore supporting the fact that due to the concealed nature of some loves,
certain behaviors are born to able to maintain this love. Besides Romeo and Juliet, there are other pieces
of literature that contains the type of love that is the root of rebellious behavior. Secrets also appear in
Pyramus and Thisbe; the whole story is revolved around one secret: the lovers meeting. The author
description of how, In silence, [they] slip out from their homes and reach (Mandelbaum 46), supports
the central idea of the effects of hidden love. This behavior is of a secret nature because the two lovers are
planning to slip out of the house to meet up and marry, despite their parents forbidding them to. The
lovers marry anyways, which shows that that love can change a persons behavior, and in this instance,
giving them a tendency for more rebellious actions. Love is strong and can be very powerful at times,
Works Cited
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Berkman, Pamela Rafael. Duty. California Collections. Ed. Kylene Beers, Martha Hougen, Carol
Jago, William McBride, Erik Palmer, and Lydia Stack. Orlando: Houghton Mifflin
Naso, Publius Ovidius. Pyramus and Thisbe. California Collections. Ed. Kylene Beers, Martha
Hougen, Carol Jago, William McBride, Erik Palmer, and Lydia Stack. Orlando:
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. California Collections. Ed. Kylene
Beers, Martha Hougen, Carol Jago, William McBride, Erik Palmer, and Lydia Stack.