Romeo and Juliet

The tragedy Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare validates the struggle behind Romeo and Juliet's love. Through dialogue and plot Shakespeare addresses the birth of love with the families’ violence that threatens to taint love’s existence. The contradicting terms violence and love contrasts the blooming emotions from Romeo and Juliet and the families’ feud. Their death becomes an oxymoron as their feelings turn to happiness instead of sorrow. Shakespeare’s use of oxymoron contrasts the Montague-Capulet feud against the passion of Romeo and Juliet’s love.
As the Montague-Capulet families are introduced, an overwhelming hatred creates a conflict between the two dignified families. The Capulets and Montagues were repelled by each others’ presence but, it contradictorily gives birth to the love of Romeo and Juliet. The feud is “[...] the earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb;/ what is her burying grave, that is her womb,” (II. iii. 9-11), to their children, Romeo and Juliet. The tension and riskiness between the two families enforces Romeo and Juliet’s passion for their love. The feud fuels life into their new love, but at the same time easily crushing it. The violence from the struggle between the two houses has the ability to take away their blossoming love from Romeo and Juliet, ultimately causing their demise. The feud itself is obstacles to their love, the old hate of their families threaten to wed them to different families and pull them apart (Holland). The feud acts as a rival lover to Romeo, competing for love from the fair Juliet, and delicately holds the balance between their life and death. The external conflict causes Romeo and Juliet to cast away their surname and their identity in order for their love to be feas...

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... it cures their parents’ old hate that is buried along with them as the feud concludes. Juliet’s wedding turns into a funeral and creates their “womb of death,” and they die of love (McKim). Their deaths become an escape from violence and society, paradoxically a new beginning.
Throughout the play, Romeo and Juliet incorporate figurative poisons through their dialogue and play on the different meanings of the uses of poison. Their desperation for these poisons and herbal remedies accentuates the utter violence and hate that revolves around their families. Oxymoron reflects the violence of feud that eventually consumes the love that evolves between Romeo and Juliet. The feud creates the passion of their new love as well as cause their downfall. Their deaths conveys that opposites become closer, including the force of the two dignified families, Montague and Capulet.