Romeo and Juliet: tragedy, themes, and literary analysis

¶ … Long-Term Conflicts

The Montagues and the Capulets

In Romeo and Juliet, one of the central themes of the play is the bitter feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. Shakespeare uses the term rage to describe the intensity of the animosity between the two families. Like many long-term conflicts, the violence between the two factions escalates in severity, in this case, from a street brawl between Benvolio and Tybalt, to the eventual murder of Mercutio at the hands of Tybalt. Also like many other long-term conflicts, there is no apparent reference to the actual origin or rationale of the initial source of the conflict between the families.

The Christians and Muslims

The long history of antagonism and hatred between Christians and Muslims can be traced, in principle, to the fundamental problem between all monotheistic religions: namely, the literal truth of one necessarily conflicts with the literal truth of the other. By definition, if Allah is the one true God, then, Jesus Christ cannot possibly be the Son of God, as believed by Christians. Besides this fundamental doctrinal conflict, the antagonism between Muslims and Christians is even more deep-rooted in that religious beliefs also provide many individuals with the psychological security of knowing what will happen to them after their physical death and what has become of their departed loved ones.

Naturally, any suggestion that those beliefs are untrue threatens that profoundly important belief. In that respect, the conflict between religions is different from the conflict between the Montagues and Capulets, in that no principal origin is ever provided to explain their antagonism.

The doctrinal (and psychological) aspects of the conflict between Christians and Muslims is supplemented by a long history of ruthless and bitter battles, some of which (in the form of Medieval Crusades) lasted for centuries during which many thousands of civilians (including women and children) were murdered by the respective groups, without mercy or remorse of any kind.

The Crips and Bloods

The ongoing feud between the notorious Crips and Bloods is similar to the conflict between the Montagues and Capulets in that there is no doctrinal or principal at issue between the groups. Both gangs have been indoctrinating their members with hatred of the other group as a fundamental defining value of their group, but without any specific reason to justify the hatred in the first place. Like many other conflicts, the mutual hatred and antagonism in continually fueled by instances of violence and deliberate insult that each believes it must avenge to save face and reputation.