Have you ever wondered if you truly had control over your own actions? Fate is the predetermined events in a person’s life. Free will if the actions that a person takes. Fate and free will are both expressed throughout Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In the play, there are multiple factors that could have led to the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, some of which were caused by fate and some of which were caused by free will. The deaths of the two main characters in Romeo and Juliet was a result of fate because of the feud between the families and the series of unfortunate events.
The first reason for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet was because of the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. At the end of Act I, Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time and they
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In the play, the Capulets, Paris, and Friar Lawrence talk after Juliet is found “dead.” However, the audience and Friar Lawrence know that she drank the potion that put her into a deep sleep so that she could escape with Romeo. “Your part in her could not keep her from death” (IV.v.75). This quote shows that Friar Lawrence said her death was not preventable, but we know that this situation happened because they could not be together. Romeo and Juliet chose to go through Friar Lawrence’s plan because they were obsessed with each other. Carter explains that although the tragedy of the play could have been caused by fate, it could have also been Romeo and Juliet’s personalities that led to the tragic ending. “However, the characters also induce the tragic ending by acting according to their established characters. Both Romeo and Juliet are impulsive, impassioned, and reckless” (Carter 2). This quote shows that their deaths were also the fault of their own personalities that caused their death. Their obsessive love towards each other combined with the feud has caused them to act the way they