Secrets In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

One famous quote by David Nicholls is, “If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.” What this really means, is if something you’re doing is kept a secret, it’s probably at best looked down upon, and at worst, thrown in jail or killed. Even though secrets may seem mysterious and exciting at first, the consequences can have a long lasting negative effect. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the secret of the love between the two characters was ultimately the reason they died a sad and untimely death. Today, secrets can still create dangerous consequences and completely change one’s life as can be seen in the article, “‘Open Secret’: When Everyone Knows Who Your 'Real' Mom Is, Except You” by NPR Staff.

In the article, “‘Open Secret’: When Everyone Knows Who Your 'Real' Mom Is, Except You” by NPR Staff, Steve Lickteig, thought he was the adopted son of a family in Kansas, only to be told by his best friends that his adopted parents were actually his grand-parents and his older sister was actually his mother. As Lickteig put it, “They told me who my mother was and they told me that they had known for basically their entire lives and that everybody I had grown up with had known for their entire lives … I think that was actually the biggest blow to me, was that it wasn't some intimate, private secret, but it was this knowledge of who I was that was out in the open, out in the world, and I had no control over it” (para. 2-3). Lickteig was especially mortified by the fact that everyone in his small town knew about it. Everyone except for him. One moment, he was celebrating his high school graduation with his friends, the next, his whole life crashes down on him as realization sets in that he’s been living a lie the whole time. Similar to Romeo and Juliet, the secret that shouldn’t have happened caused pain and suffering. When Lickteig confronted his family, his “mom”/grandmother didn’t admit at first. “And she looked at me, my mother, and said, "I have no idea what you're talking about." And I said, you know,