Similarities Between Romeo And Juliet And I Am Offering This Poem To You

Love is not a thing that people think and treat the same, people can perceive and express this love very differently. This is shown in the both the excerpt from Whillian shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Jimmy Santiago Baca’s poem “I am Offering This Poem to You”. It shows how both protagonists are willing to do anything in the name of love. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is caught between what to do as he thinks of Juilet so fondly. In “I am Offering This Poem to You” the protagonist has nothing else to give to his love but a poem. Although both protagonists have different ways of showing their affection, they both find out how to make it clear. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo sees Juliet as someone who is not just a woman, he sees her like a more

This demonstrates the disparity of their situation and makes it seem as an unrequited love story. Romeo does not tell Juliet about how he feels at all, and he only thinks it. This contrasts directly with “I am Offering This Poem to You” because the author is writing a letter to their lover to show their love while Romeo sits and watches his love. Romeo even thinks to himself “Her eye discourses; I will answer it. / I am too bold, ‘tis not to me she speaks:”(Shakespeare 13-14). As he is about to speak to Juliet he bites his tongue and continues to sit and watch. The fact that one protagonist will not speak to his lover while the other believes in showing their love is another key factor in decision making. In both Romeo and Juliet and “I am Offering This Poem to You”, the two protagonists want to let their lover know about their love, but deal with it in different ways. In Romeo and Juliet, right as Romeo is about to speak he stops and continues to dream about her beauty and compare her to the stars. He says that “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,” (Shakespeare 19). On the other hand, the protagonist says “when the world outside / no longer cares if you live or die / remember / I love you” (Baca 27-30). Romeo’s version of love makes him able to admire and watch his love without the need to say more, and makes his lover oblivious to his love while the “love” that the protagonist from “I am Offering This