Why It Matters
Romeo and Juliet is a play that was written more 400 years ago, yet it is still relevant today. Almost everyone can tell you the basic outline of the story and how it ends in tragedy. But why is this? There are many actual stories of suicides that have similarities to the one shown in the play. The overwhelming majority of these suicides is among teenagers who were in a similar circumstance. An example of this is the Barking Church Case.
Two people believed to be lovers were found dead at the same spot within a couple weeks of each other. The death was due to overdoses of a drug that acted in a similar way to the poison that Romeo took. The first death was believed to be an accident. It was believed that the person had a drug overdose at a party the night before he was found. The lover, having found the body, blamed himself for what had happened and purposely overdosed on the drug to kill himself. Much like in Romeo and Juliet, the lover believed that they could not live without the other person and so they killed themselves. They also used the same weapon that they believed had killed the other person. This of course turned out to be untrue in Romeo and Juliet, but what links the stories together is the emotions of guilt and loss that drew these people to this point.
Emotions and Their Effects on Teenagers
It’s no unknown fact that as people become teenagers, they often go through heavy emotional scenarios that influence their actions. One of the strongest emotions that causes teens to do things is love. People’s connections to other people can make them do actions that might seem extreme. To the person though, these actions don’t feel extreme at all. An example of this is a Liverpool Tragedy where two older teens tragically died. A young man accidentally died when he fell off a building. Feeling guilty and alone, his girlfriend hung herself a couple days later. While this is a sad tragedy, for the girlfriend involved, this action felt right to her. This is because of her emotions and her attachment to the man who died. The emotions and their effects are the biggest impact on teens and it is how the story of Romeo and Juliet relates to stories and emotions of modern day teenagers.
Volume Infinite 