The Contradictory Nature of Love In the play, The Tragedy Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare introduces two young teenagers who believe they are deeply in love with each other. Romeo and Juliet both have received perspectives about love from different characters showing how love doesn’t just have one definition. They both fall for each other and though at first it, was all romance, soon Shakespeare will show in the thematic statement that there are many different ideas and definitions of love. Shakespeare uses juxtaposition through foil characters, oxymorons, and the motif of light and darkness to show the contradictory nature of love and how it’s romantic yet dangerous and manipulative. Shakespeare uses foil characters to show different perspectives on love and how every experience leads to a different idea of love. In the prologue, Shakespeare presents the story as a romance and murder story getting across the idea that not every love story has a happy ending: “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life” (Prologue 5) Romeo and Juliet have similar ideas of love because of their similar experience but characters like …show more content…
Romeo and Juliet sneak around at night but with all that darkness they view each other as their light. As Romeo stood in the shadows, he says “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon”, he is comparing Juliet to the sun and the lightness (2.2.4). After seeing the relationship between Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare chose to have Friar Lawrence say “The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night” to show how love can go in many different directions and everyones perspective of love can change back and forth (2.3.1). Shakespeare using the motif of light and darkness to show how people can have multiple views on love, he wants to get the point acrossed in the thematic statement that not everyone is going to have the same opinion on