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Themes in Romeo & Juliet

Love and Marriage: (monologue: “Only your name is my enemy”) In this part of novel “Romeo and Juliet”, the night is the background of the whole scene. Juliet, leaning out of window, starts making a speech, or better, a monologue, whose function is to show her real feelings and intentions about Romeo. So, the power of words is opposed to the substance of things: in fact, Romeo is not just a name, but a real person that’s present in her life. The situation changes when Romeo, overheard Juliet’s words, bursts out and declares his love. Here, Shakespeare manages to pass from a situation of love poetry, where a single lover sing her love, to a scene of drama, where two people talk to each other. The dialogue shows the characters of the two young lovers. In truth, the main character of the scene is Juliet, who shows a deeper conscience of things and is more perceptive than Romeo. In fact, she tries to make contact with him through the dialogue, distinctive mark of drama, while Romeo replies in a rhetorical way, typical of love poetry. So, Shakespeare wants to highlight the main theme of the play, focusing essentially on the contrast between the rhetoric of love and the tragedy of life.

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Marriage? No, thanks!

Since ancient times, marriage has been considered as a rapport of cohabitation shared by a man and a woman that ensure the family and it’s proof of a deal of mutual confidence and fidelity made by each of its members. Subsequently, this act is an indication of a strong sentimental attachment that, if it’s shared by two initially, at a later stage it will be the heart on which the whole family and the identity of each component are based. However, despite the presence of the latter inside our society is protected by the laws of the state, there are still many aspects of our culture that don’t led young people to get married. If in some cases, in fact, it’s the legal practice that forbids its implementation, the opposition wielded by one of two young’s family to the celebration of the marriage is the main reason that bar the rightful union between two individuals in our society. The latter, in fact, thinks the marriage must be based on real things and economic interests rather than on love, which takes second place and it’s considered completely unfit to build up a committed relationship in the couple. Therefore, we can say that the economic conditions of one of two partners or of both constitute a step forward in order there to be the marriage, seeing as they are the primary source required to ensure the welfare between the partners and, especially, they are essential to meet their needs and those relating to the future family. Furthermore, if there’s a focus on the social status of the young or on the age disparity between the two partners, this inevitably results in a limitation of the acquaintance of the person that could join the other family. However, the most frequent reason that bar marriage is the discrimination on the basis of religion, sign of a mental de-evolution that continues to influence all choices defining the degree of ignorance of a large part of our society. In fact, this pretext, not considered as matter of pride or growth for both in socio-cultural terms, means a great distance between different cultures and, especially, it could even be a barrier to the cultural integration that, on the contrary, it must be present in all types of society, seeing as it answers for cultural enrichment and individual and collective development. Therefore, despite marriage continue to be a powerful pillar that inevitably results in character and behavior of the individual, then of the couple and subsequently of the new family, it’s increasingly exploited and seen as a means whereby we think we are happy and have achieved stability given by the mere presence of material possessions. So love, which should be reason and cornerstone of it, takes second place inevitably, making room for the will of the others.

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