Comparison Of Much Ado About Nothing And Bust Your Windows

When looking at Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare and Bust Your Windows by Jazmine Sullivan, one can see how perceived betrayal can cause people to lash out with the intent to hurt others. In Much Ado About Nothing, the main conflict of the story is that a young man, Claudio, is convinced that his fiance Hero has slept with another man before their wedding. Similarly, in Bust Your Windows, a woman discovers that her lover has also cheated on her, and how that disloyalty has caused her to destroy the things valuable to him. Both characters have very similar reactions to the discovery that a partner has cheated, despite these characters being written hundreds of years apart, on different continents, and living in extremely differently

Claudio proclaims that if he finds out that his soon-to-be wife is in fact not a virgin like she says, he will publicly humiliate her at the altar, “If I see anything tonight why I should not marry her, tomorrow in the congregation, where I should wed, there will I shame her” (3.2). Similarly, Sullivan sings of her discovery that her lover had cheated on her, and how this horrible act necessitates retaliation even though nothing she does to him could possibly be worse than what he did to her,“Even though what you did to me was much worse/I had to do something to make you hurt, yeah” (Sullivan). Both believe they are justified in hurting their lovers for their supposed duplicity and feel justified in doling out retribution. This belief that one of the greatest crimes is the betrayal of a lover is a

Claudio shames Hero during their wedding ceremony, publicly lambasting her for her supposed infidelity, and how she has apparently misled him and everyone else in regard to her maidenhood, “She knows the heat of a luxurious bed; Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty” (4.1). Likewise, Sullivan scolds her ex-lover for deceiving her, confronting him in regards to how he has double crossed her and not been truthful, “You see you can't just play with people's feelings/Tell them you love them and don't mean it” (Sullivan). Indeed, both Claudio and Sullivan voice their grief upon learning about their partner's lies, and how they feel that their feelings have been blatantly disregarded. The two characters also condemn their partners for being two-faced, as they didn't even have the tact to lie by omission, but rather told them things that were the antithesis of the truth. Both feel disrespected in that their partners didn’t have the decency to be honest about their wrongdoings, and instead went behind their backs, concealing their true actions and nature behind lies and falsehoods. Not only are they hurt by their betrayal, but how their feelings were never even a factor it those betrayals, and were ignored entirely by their