Montagues,Capulets,Corleones Essay, Research Paper

Montagues,Capulets,and Corleones Shakespeare s Romeo and Juliet contains more than just the story of two young lovers. It also deals with underlying moral issues not fully comprehended by society even today. The Montagues and Capulets defend their family honor and name as stubbornly, faithfully, and even as violently as the famed La Cosa Nostra does now. There is no morality in some of the decisions made by these families. It is these issues that remain everlasting through their siblings. They live by their own rules, and more importantly their traditions. If the Montagues and Capulets could have gotten along, it may have saved the lives of their beloved teenagers. Yet it was more important that honor and tradition be upheld, Montagues and Capulets were arch enemies. Romeo and Juliet were from both, and knew that their love could never be publicized. Thus, leading to their downfall. Both of the young lovers knew that the families were too set in their ways to ever allow marriage. For Romeo and Juliet to even think about arranging a secret wedding, was a definite breach of the norm. It doesn t seem proper, to the brunt of society anyway. Why wouldn t the families come to an understanding? Romeo and Juliet were in love. How can the play end in tragedy, is love not the conquerer of all evils? Shakespeare wants to keep us slightly doubtful. Killing, the actual taking of one s life is the prime example of an underlying moral problem pondered by the great Shakespeare, as well as society today. While we consider killing to be wrong in our society, some find it to be necessary for theirs to exist. In the play Tybault, young and hotheaded finds his family name and honor in jeopardy with the presence of Romeo. His family tradition is more important than life itself, and he proceeds to commit murder to prove it. In Martin Scorcese s movie The Godfather we witness Michael Corleone, head of his mafia family take the life of anyone who threatened his family, and more importantly its tradition. Murder and revenge seem to rear their ugly heads constantly in these type of lifestyles. Both Tybault and Michael were only doing what they thought the elders of their families would have wanted them to. Both fail to see through the thick walls of pride built over the generations.

The point of characters such as these is so that our society can get an idea of why sometimes things have to change. Sometimes traditions have to be broken, family names are sometimes just that, names. In order for us to live together in at least a partly compatible society, there has to be a little give, a little openness towards the other point of view. It takes great people to make these moral points into a sort of silver lining in their plays or movies. One just has to get past all the teen suicide and violent sword or gunfights to see it.