Romeo and Juliet

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1. 
   amethystrose Teacher
   High School - 9th Grade

   Lord Capulet gives one of his servants a list of people to invite to the Capulet gala that evening, but the servant does not know how to read.  The servant happens to come across Romeo in the street and he asks Romeo to read the names on the list for him.  As Romeo is reading, he sees the name of the woman who recently spurned him (Rosaline) and he decides to crash the party just so that he can stand and look at her across the room.  Fate has already stepped in by getting Romeo to attend the party to begin with, but he has a bad dream just before the party begins, and he has mixed feelings about going after all.  Mercutio says that his dream is a bunch of nonsense and that going to the party will be the best cure for his sickness (love-sickness).  Ironically, this is true because it is at the party that Romeo sees Juliet and falls for her.

   Romeo's fateful dream about how going to the party will be the end of him is further fulfilled when Romeo kills Tybalt (Juliet's cousin) in a street fight.  Romeo is banished, and fate has separated the two lovers.

   The Friar comes up with a plan to reunite them, but "the best laid schemes of mice and men often go astray".  Fate steps in and the plan backfires when the message about Juliet's pretended death doesn't reach him, and Romeo believes that she is truly dead.  He then kills himself in her tomb moments before she awakens to find a dead husband by her side.  She then takes her own life.

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/romeo/fate-free-will-romeo-juliet

   http://www.enotes.com/romeo/themes

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   • Flag as inappropriate

   Posted by amethystrose on Thursday February 14, 2008 at 6:26 AM
   
   

2. 
   mcarlsonwest Teacher
   High School - 11th Grade

   Take a look at the moments when Romeo refers to himself as a boat (I.iv and V.iii).  You can see, by examining the metaphor, that his feelings on fate have changed, and he is now "taking control of his ship."

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   • Flag as inappropriate

   Posted by mcarlsonwest on Tuesday March 18, 2008 at 7:43 PM
   
   

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