Sirius Frost
Mrs. Bleachman
English 1
Wednesday May. 2016
A most maliciously unorthodox sub-par rendition of an excellently crafted teenage Homeo-Sapien example
Let me start off by telling you all a little story, one day my sister and I decide to ride our bikes up and down this hill near our house . Everything was going well and we were having fun until my sister decided it would be a good idea to go bouncing around the many pot holes that liter the bottom portion of the hill. I didn’t really question the logic or the safety hazards so I went right ahead with it, and (much to my surprise and dismay) when I hit the biggest pot hole of the 12 on the hill, I went skidding out of control and crashed into the pavement. Now you might be asking to yourself “Why would he have done such an idiotic thing to himself?” or “Was he even thinking?!” well, I might just have an answer for you , and it’s not that I wasn’t thinking more than it was I wasn’t thinking the right way. Now you might be saying that you would have never done anything that either I or some other crazy teen have done, but are you sure about these assumptions? To clarify on this, let’s look at the story of Romeo and Juliet, this story features teenagers as the central characters in a reckless, passion-filled plotline that went horribly wrong. Students and Adults alike both think that it’s a little over the top however, can these characters compare to real life teens? Well the answer is, yes they can. Although there are a various differences, we can mostly agree that teen characters in Romeo and Juliet can, and indeed do, compare emotionally, and behaviorally to real-life teens.
To begin let’s recap what happened in Romeo and Juliet real quick, the author begins by establishing there are two feuding families, each with an only child who have never met. They are both in that hormonal teenage phase of life and when they do meet they quickly fall in “love”. Very quickly, sneaking and making out and planning for more of the two becomes the only things the two teens can think about, however, because of their families rivalries, their lying and sneaking out is extremely risky and the punishment for disobedience was very severe at the time—yet they both declare that the risk is worth the reward. Let’s clarify on this, In Act 2, Scene 2, Romeo states “I have nights cloak to hide me from their eyes and if thou love me, let them find me here! My death were better ended by their hate than death prorogued wanting of thy love” (Shakespeare 973). The basic meaning of this speech is that Romeo feels that he has the situation under control because of how dark it is outside, he also states that hearing Juliet say that she loves him tonight rather than going home not knowing makes him feel like risking his own life is worth it.
Alright, so now that we have summarized the basic idea and story behind Romeo and Juliet, lets head on over and look at a research article titled Beautiful Brains for a minute or two. This article states that while the brain is almost fully grown by the age of 12, a massive reworking of the brains neural connections and mapping in the pre-frontal cortex happens between the ages of 12 and 15. The author then goes on to state that because the pre-frontal cortex is still developing, teens experience more of a challenge when controlling themselves from acting impulsively, this is especially true if the reward will be really big, in Romeo’s case this couldn’t be more true, he knows that Juliet’s family will kill him if they catch him skulking around in their garden, yet he needs to see her because of how little he can control his impulsive desires. Likewise, Juliet is also guilty of this fact in Act 2 Scene 2 (Shakespeare 975-977). In this Act, Juliet risks her reputation when she didn’t “use her lips in prayer” at the party the Capulets were holding (Shakespeare 964). The disaster that would have occurred if they had been caught would be unimaginably grave! Albeit there is one major difference between this article and Romeo and Juliet. After all, it is imperative we realize that Romeo and Juliet were heavily influenced in their decision making not by the networking or chemistry of their brains, rather, than by advice from their peers and adults, an example being Friar Lawrence. Friar Lawrence is the one who influenced Romeo to leave for Mantua until he and Juliet could be together again. Likewise, he also influenced Juliet to convince her parents she was dead, which she promptly went along with. Desperation as well as a hint of brazenness rather than Psychology might have driven Shakespeare’s teenagers to make some pretty brash decisions (Shakespeare). Nonetheless, it seems to me that the basic and general psychology of how teens weigh risks might be a universal truth and therefore, pertaining to realism
Now let’s look at something interesting, while not straying away from what I’m trying to convey too much before getting to the point. Now when we look at Romeo and Juliet we think “Oh cool, an over exaggerated love story that’s one of a kind!” but in reality, Romeo and Juliet’s Story line is actually stolen from another story. Shakespeare got HIS vision for this now very popular story from a poem written in 1562 entitled, The Tragicall History of Romeus and because of the stories popularity in modern day culture we can still see evidence of this storyline with twists added into it throughout our everyday culture, an example being through music.
A common example to back up this statement would by Taylor Swift, a popular musician, who has a WHOLE song and video dedicated to the ideas presented to us in Romeo and Juliet with her title hit “Love Story.” The lyrics presented in this song mimic the same imagery as the final scene of Act 1 when Juliet closes her eyes just before she is kissed by Romeo and later on in Act 2 Scene 2 when she is looking down on him from her balcony. There are plenty more examples too, such as the description of the party and the lyrics “cause we’re dead if they knew,” which matches up very nicely with Juliet line “If they do see thee, they will murder thee!” (Shakespeare 973). But now let’s look at the differences. In Taylor Swift’s song for example her “daddy” discovers the two lovers secret romance and forbids it, whereas Juliet’s dad did not know until after she had met her demise. In addition to this Taylor Swift’s song implies that her female character wants to leave with her Romeo right then and begins to beg him not leave without her. Yet in the actually story Juliet was bidding her time for the time for her plan to be enacted so she could run away with Romeo.
In conclusion to all that has been said in the previous paragraphs, and to provide a final assessment. It seems to me that although there are a variety of differences in the way they act and assess risks and rewards that Romeo and Juliet do indeed have a lot in common with real teenagers. They were emotional, bad choice makers, and most importantly of all they were very impulsively orientated and this basically sums up every teen in modern day America. Shakespeare most likely wrote them so they acted like they did in his own time, which is just as erratic as they do now and his characters seem pretty realistic after comparing their behaviors and thoughts to the article on the adolescent brain and Taylor Swift’s song. All in all It seems that the teenagers in Romeo and Juliet accurately represent teens in the modern age.
Works Cited
Dobbs, David. “Beautiful Brains” National Geographic Society, Oct 2016 Online.
Maroon 5, “Daylight” song lyrics. 13 April 2016,
https://playgoogle.com.onlineShakespeare, William. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. McDougal Litell literature. Student Edition.Ed/
