The characters in both "West Side Story" and "Romeo and Juliet" are similar in the way that both have family and friends that want to keep them apart. The stories start off with two young couples desperate to find love. When Romeo stables upon Juliet, his families arch enemy at a Capulets ball, he is stunned by her beauty and ammediatly falls for her. Same with Tony former leader of the Jets, he falls in love with Maria the sister of his arch Bernardo who leads the sharks. When Riff the leader of the Jets finds out that Tony likes Maria he fears for Tony. He knows that Bernardo will kill Tony if Bernardo found out. Both Tony and Romeo go through losing people in their life. Tony lose Riff because Bernardo kills him s

In both stories Irony is the most revealing. "West Side Story" and "Romeo and Juliet" have a lot of dramatic irony. When Romeo kills Tybalt he escapes because he knows that people will be after him because he is a Montague and Tybalt is a Capulet. The Friar sends a letter to Romeo saying that Juliet is pretending to be dead so she does not have to marry Paris and that she will met him in a certain place. The letter never reaches Romeo and he hears from Balthasar that Juliet is dead. After that Romeo ammediatly thinks about committing suicided. He goes to the apothecary and asks him for a vial of poison. He goes to the Capulets tomb where Juliet is laying and wards off any guards. While Romeo is trying to committee suicide he kills Paris because Paris tries to stop him from entering Juliet's tomb. Once in the tomb Romeo kills him self a second later Juliet awakes and sees Romeo dead and she grabs the dagger and kills herself as well saying with her last breath " This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die". (132) Whereas in "West Side Story", Tony asks to be killed by Chino it is the opposite of "Romeo and Juliet" where Juliet's dies first than Romeo this time it is Tony instead of Maria. Tony says at the end " We've gone from living and loving to dying. It happened too fast".(148) With both of the stories the characters fell in love so fast that they did not have time to think about what was wrong and what was right all they knew was that the only way for them to be together was to die. The only

and yet, methinks, it should not, For he hath still been tried a holy man. How if, when I am laid into the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo come to free me? (112)

Some topics in this essay:
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