Similarities Between Romeo And Juliet And West Side Story

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Why love? Why go through all that trouble? Love is comparable in the play, Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, and the movie, West Side Story, by Tony Kushner. Romeo and Juliet takes place in Verona, Italy, in the 1300s. West Side Story takes place in New York City, on the west side of Manhattan, in the 1950s. Romeo and Tony both go through love and do not end the way things should. Romeo and Juliet from Shakespeare, and Tony and Maria from West Side Story, are both in love with each other. Both of their family or social group do not get along in their story. Even though they have many similarities they also have some differences. For example, Romeo and Juliet are wealthy, while in West Side Story ,Tony and Maria are poor. The ending never goes the way it is supposed to. Although the settings of these tragic love stories are vastly different, the parallel characters and plot elements of both stories help to develop the theme of tragedy. …show more content…

Romeo and Tony, for example, both fall in love with someone they are not supposed to. Both characters die in their worlds. Tony and Romeo both kill a rival family or gang member. However, they are different in that Romeo dies of poison by suicide while Tony dies of murder. When comparing Juliet and Maria, only Juliet dies. Maria is still alive but in Romeo and Juliet both lovers die. Maria is also a different race than Tony so that is one of the reasons that their families are rivals, and that they think they get treated differently than the