Essay on Personal Choice in The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

For years, the human race has believed that love is something from a fantasy. People expect that their soulmates are brought to their feet by destiny, not by choice. The vast majority imagine their better half is out there roaming the streets, waiting to stumble upon their future counterpart. Nobody digs deep enough into their love story to find the true meaning of love and how their partner was able to cross paths with them. However one makes their choices is how their love story will be written in the end. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and “Pyramus and Thisbe” target the idea of personal choice as being the reason why the pairs of love-struck lovers took their lives.

Personal choice floods the minds of the young soulmates in Shakespeare and Ovid’s deadly love stories. The teenage brains of these four lovers are to blame for their tragic double suicide. Decisions that are made up in their inexperienced minds cause the two pairs of children to choose death over life in order to be together. The entire chain of unfortunate choices begins the day they met. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet leads up to the enchanting moment that Romeo first lays his eyes on Juliet. Romeo admired her from afar, only appreciating her elegance and beauty.

The two adolescents are then infatuated with each other from that night on. In Act 2 Scene 2, after exchanging their feelings for a few minutes, Juliet proposes marriage to Romeo. She subtly proposes, “Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed. / If that thy bent of love be honorable, / Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow…” (2.2.142-145). The lack of familiarity with this pair of lovers causes them to make choices that are detrimental to their well-being. Romeo and Juliet have fallen so deeply in love with each other that it causes their judgment to be impaired.

They choose to make split-second decisions that in the end will be monumentally catastrophic. In Act 4 Scene 1, Juliet rushes to Friar and begs for a potion that will put her into a death-like sleep so she could run away with her true love. Friar tells Juliet that “...A thing like death to chide away this shame, / That cop’st with death himself to scape from it…,” will help her escape her wedding with Paris and help her run away with Romeo.