Compare And Contrast The West Side Story

1841 Words8 Pages

MAJOR ESSAY The West Side Story is popular for adapting the classic romantic tragedy, "Romeo and Juliet" (Anonymous). On the other hand, Porgy and Bess is an opera with regard black residents in South Carolina. Basically, this film is based on the history of race in America. Since these two films involve different plot, this paper will discuss how these stories differ or what they have in common. Aside from that, the setting of each film will be provided, as well as the characters, its synopsis, and the ending or outcome of the same. The West Side Story Chapman believes that this film is a classic tale of Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet in the 1950s. Setting The location of the story 's action is set on the west side of New York City (Huggo). Characters There are three leading men in the musical, Tony, Riff and Bernardo. Tony is known to be handsome, sincere, and sweet (Stage Agent). On the other hand, Riff is full of life, brilliant and feisty (Stage Agent). The latter was Tony’s best friend in the film Bernardo is the brother of Maria and the boyfriend of Anita. Bernardo is also the leader of the Sharks (Stage Agent). Anita and Maria are the female lead actresses in the West Side Story. While Anita was described as fiery, intelligent, and bold, Maria is described as a naive young woman from …show more content…

Thus, residents survived through farming, fishing, and even selling drugs just to crawl their way out from poverty. Their peaceful life was disturbed when Crown murdered Robbins (Gershwin). After that, Crown left the town, and his girlfriend, Bess, ended up with Porgy. The latter was very happy with Crown 's absence because he has been in love with Bess for a long time now. However, Crown returned and subsequently pressured Bess to be with him again (Gershwin). Bess wanted to stay with Porgy, but she had trouble resisting her ex-boyfriend