thoughts on Romeo and Juliet

            I am still reading phantoms in the brain which is a very scientific book. The information and real life stories continue to fascinate and perplex me. But there isn’t really anything “deep” about a scientific book that I could write about on an “English language arts” blog. So I guess I will write about some thoughts about Romeo and Juliet since I’m writing a literary essay on it.

            I really love Shakespeare’s writing. I loved it even before this whole unit in ELA, but through this unit I got a much deeper understanding of Romeo and Juliet. I have gained even more respect for William Shakespeare because I have realized that his plays are quite complex. I really like that the characters (as in most books) are purposefully named. But more importantly I like how the main/more sophisticated characters in the play speak differently than the less important ones. They speak in sonnets and iambic pentameter, which is really awesome. This year I wrote my first sonnet and it was a lot of work. Knowing that Shakespeare wrote 160 or so sonnets plus all the ones in his plays is just extraordinary (and the thing is they are all really good and deeply meaningful). I also noticed his exquisite metaphors; some were religious and others just very beautiful. I learned a lot from this unit.

            My essay is primarily about fate. Personally I think that William Shakespeare believes in fate, I think that the play is created so that it is fate when Romeo and Juliet meet. And they fall in love. That very love brings them to their fate, which is to die. We had a class discussion on fate and it turns out that different people perceive it in different ways (which isn’t really surprising). Some believe that it is the direction of life, the way things are bound to be. But some take it more seriously and others less. I used the quote from Daniel Defoe as an introduction to my thoughts about fate. “The best of men cannot defend their fate, the good die early and the bad die late”

            Now that we’re finishing up this unit, I just want to say that I actually enjoyed most of it and I definitely learned a lot from analyzing Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I hope that I can read the rest of his plays with the same detail.