Romeo And Juliet's Death

We first see a choice by either Romeo or Juliet that begins to affect the tragedy of their death when we see that Romeo decides to go to the Capulet’s ball. What had happened was Romeo was on the streets of Verona when a servant, who is illiterate, comes up to Romeo and asks for his help reading a list of people to invite to a party. Romeo begins to read through this list and sees that a girl named Rosaline is being invited to this party. At this point in the story, Romeo is in love with a girl named Rosaline and wants nothing but to marry her. After seeing Rosaline’s name on the invitation list, Romeo also notices that the party is being thrown by the Capulets, his family’s adversary. While Romeo knows that he should not attend this ball due
to the fact it is being thrown by his enemy, he decides to anyway in a desperate attempt to try and win over Rosaline. The scene in which the party takes place is the scene in which Romeo and Juliet first meet.
Romeo would have never met Juliet, had he decided not to go the party, and in effect him and Juliet may have never fallen in love and killed themselves. Another time we see a choice made by the two leading characters of this story that affected the tragedy of their demise is when Romeo and Juliet choose to get married in secret. They know their families are enemies, and fear that if they tell their families they’re in love, then they will be forced to no longer be together. For this reason, Romeo and Juliet go to someone they can trust to marry them, who happens to be a friend of the couple named Friar Laurence. Friar Laurence knows marrying them will come with consequences if Romeo and Juliet’s families find out, but he decides to marry them anyway. We see this confirmation from Friar Laurence from this line on page 1042 of our English literature textbook, “Come, come with me, and we will make short work.” Consequently, the Montagues and Capulets continue feuding since they do not know that Romeo and Juliet are together. Instead of marrying in secret, Romeo and Juliet should have “manned up” and told their parents that they were together. At the very least, Juliet’s wedding to Paris would never have been
planned and Friar John would have never had to go find Romeo and tell him about Juliet’s plan with Friar Laurence. Because of this wedding, Juliet made a plan with Friar Laurence to take a potion and fake her death, so that she could get out of the marriage and run off with Romeo. Since Romeo is banished from Verona, their home town, for killing a member of the Capulets, Friar Laurence sends his friend Friar John to tell Romeo of Juliet’s plan so Romeo knows that Juliet is still alive. Unfortunately, the wedding ends up being moved up a day from the original date so Juliet’s plan has to be set into action a day earlier than planned, and Friar John now has one less day to get to Romeo (Friar John is traveling by donkey). Friar John could not have taken any longer than he did to get to Romeo and because of this, Romeo hears of Juliet’s death not knowing that it is fake and he travels back to Verona actually passing Friar John on the way. This is what leads to Romeo killing himself (believing that Juliet is truly dead), and then Juliet kills herself after waking up and seeing that Romeo has killed himself. Them killing themselves ends up being the panacea for the two families’ problems with each other. Juliet agreeing to go along with the Friar’s plan and taking the sleeping potion that would trick those around her into thinking that she was dead is one final example in “Romeo and Juliet”, in which the reader sees that Romeo and Juliet’s choices are what ultimately leads to the tragedy of their death.
After Juliet agrees to marry Paris, she makes a plan with Friar Laurence to drink a sleeping potion that will make her seem dead; the reader sees why after reading Juliet’s line “O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris.” on page 1074 of our Literature Textbook. Since Juliet agrees to do this, the people around her, be it family, friends, etc., actually believe that Juliet is dead. Her family holds a funeral for her and are in unbelievable pain over her “death”. Romeo also believes that Juliet is dead and kills himself not knowing Juliet is alive. Of course, soon after he has done this is when the potion wears off and awakes in her family's mausoleum to see a dead Romeo. This causes her to literally freak out and search Romeo for some more of the potion he used to kill himself to kill herself. When Juliet is not able to do this, she finds a knife on the ground that she uses to stab herself in the stomach with. Their deaths’ were almost like an unspoken suicide pact. So, had Juliet not gone along with Friar Laurence’s plan, Romeo would not have killed himself, which means Juliet would not have killed herself and the two would’ve had the opportunity to tell their families’ that
they’re together. This then would’ve given them the chance to have lived happily ever after.
Because of the overwhelming amount of choices both Romeo and Juliet made throughout the play, their death was completely and solely their own fault. From the beginning of their story and as it progresses, the reader continually sees Romeo and Juliet making ill-thought choices that are going to eventually affect them negatively as their story continues. Had Romeo decided not to even go to the Capulet’s ball in the first place, he would have never met Juliet and they would’ve never killed themselves because of their seemingly forbidden love. In conclusion, it is the decisions that the two main characters, Romeo and Juliet, made throughout the beloved tale by Shakespeare that led to the ultimate tragedy of their deaths.