The Role of Family Issues in Romeo and Juliet

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Is family always the cause of issues? Does the audience know how much our family reflects on our opinions? Everything that anyone does reflects on us, depending on our gender, age group, family, or ethnic background. If you think that families are hard on each other then think of Romeo and Juliet’s families, including Capulet, Lady Capulet, Tybalt, Nurse, Montague, and Lady Montague, and how they played the ultimate role in Romeo and Juliet's deaths.
Namely, Capulet plays a huge role in how much pressure Romeo and Juliet have to endure in order to follow their family’s wishes. If Capulet had just agreed to Juliet originally marrying Paris and not said “My child is yet a stranger in the world,/She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;/Let two more summers wither in their pride/Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride,” (1. 2. 8-11) then they wouldn’t have had to deal with their death’s. This shows that her father, Capulet, cares about her and what she wants. As the play goes on the audience sees that Capulet changes and starts to think that Juliet needs to marry Paris because he is a great count, and he then goes on to call her names. One might think that this pushed her to grow closer to Romeo and ignore her parents wishes. At the time in history that Romeo and Juliet is placed it is very uncommon to not respect your parents wishes and what they think is best for you. In a sense, parents at that time controlled their kids.
In contrast to Capulet, Lady Capulet pushes Juliet to marry Paris even more. As we read Romeo and Juliet, we see that Lady Capulet wants what is best for her daughter, but she pushes her daughter so hard that she falls in love and marries another man that her parents don’t like. This can b...

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...ids and what they were going to do with their life.
In conclusion, it is very clear throughout the play that family is a driving force in the responsibility of Romeo and Juliet’s deaths. As we saw, family is very important in this time period and is often the driving force of forming opinions about other people. Families are almost always the driving force of the opinions and issues that their children face. Romeo and Juliet’s families were most definitely the driving force because our families almost always reflect our opinions on the outside world. Romeo and Juliet’s families, including Capulet, Lady Capulet, Tybalt, Nurse, Montague, and Lady Montague, were the driving force of the reason Romeo and Juliet killed themselves.

Works Cited
Applebee, Arthur N. Romeo and Juliet. The Language of Literature. Evenston, IL : McDougal Littell, 2002. 990-1102. Print.

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