Romeo and Juliet: Love vs. Hate?

I don’t think I could bring myself to be pompous enough to tell you which, if either, emotion the writer of the piece based it on. If this is meant as a purely opinionated question, I can’t help you, I’m not big into opinions. I would say any answer is applicable, and likewise would agree that none of them are, a mere matter of which perspective I take, and I can take any that you have offered. And all of them assume that Romeo & Juliet was at all about love and/or hate versus simply having said emotions within the story, or driving the plot. Choosing a side seems simple minded to me. How about choosing to understand all the sides? Then simply pick one to satisfy your class/teacher/grade.
I don’t lend folk psychology much validity, so the first things that come to mind are: emotions cannot be measured accurately in any objective manner, emotions are subjective by their nature and thus different for each individual, and is there any chance that love and hate are the same emotion only differentiated by the desired effect?
Do I have one scale, love encompassing the upper portion, indifference in the middle, and hate encompassing the lower portion, such that my feeling is charted somewhere thereon? Do I have two scales, and could thus both love and hate a subject?
If I hate someone because of the emotions they stir in me by their actions, do I love the idea of a world without them there to choose their actions? Perhaps I love the idea of simply removing their freedom of choice, but don’t have to admit that I could/would want someone dead. Perhaps I love the idea of administering some form of punishment. Or none of these.
I have rarely encountered hatred without its counterpart. If you kill someone I don’t know, I will have little emotional reaction. Kill someone I love, and to what degree I love them may be directly proportional to the degree I hate you for taking them from me.

Just some thoughts.

I think it’s both – depends on which characters you’re talking about.

Between R&J, it was clearly love that developed and eventually led to their deaths.

But it was in the framework of hatred between the Montagues and the Capulets. The families were willing to kill each other.

So I don’t think you can really make a conclusion that it was totally one or the other – love or hate. The book showed both.

And don’t forget the end, after R&J are both dead. The two families are both shamed and quiet after the two deaths. They are no longer hating each other – both families have to live with the consequences of their hatred. Ultimately both families are united (metaphorically) because of the deaths of their loved ones.

To me, the play shows both.

I definitely think it is both. It’s the love of the “star-crossed lovers” that illustrates the hatred between the Capulets and the Montagues. Every re-telling of that tale (e.g., West Side Story) tells the story of the love and the hatred.

A little bit of both, but in the end All are punish-edd

It’s essentially a tragedy, more about sexual awakening, lust & loss than anything else.

I think it was about passion. How too much passion, be it love or hate, can have dire consequences.

@Sinqer I was looking for opinions but, I actually think your answer has been the most helpful. Yes, the point is to choose either love or hate. It might be simple minded, but I think its one of the most important topics anyone could discuss. To satisfy the assignment, I would have chosen love. However, the topic became of personal interest so, I wanted not only to get a grade. I wanted to analyze how this discussion is relevant in people’s lives today. And my analysis first starts with studying others opinions on the subject matter.

Your post was very interesting. I’ve never thought of love and hate as the same emotion. I believe they go hand in hand as the two most basic emotions that all other emotion come from…but, never as the same thing.

@elbanditoroso True. I’m talking about the whole story in general. Not necessarily the theme… just what the play is about. I can’t think of another way to describe it.

I agree that you can’t exclude one or the other because then, the story wouldn’t be the same. Without the hate, you’d loose the backbone of the story. Without the hate there wouldn’t be any conflict. Without the love you loose everything. There’s no hope, no joy without any love in the story.

What I’m looking for is, if you boiled the story down to its bare essentials, what was the main element that created the story.

@Yetanotheruser, @hud Thanks!

@ucme I’ve heard that before. That Romeo and Juliet is about adolescence and lust. Its and interesting idea. (Not sure that I’d talk about that in my essays lol) I wonder if that was one of Shakespeare’s original thoughts when he was writing it.

@Pandora Yes! I can definitely see that. That reminds me of when Friar Lawrence was talking to Romeo!

FRIAR LAURENCE

These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

I’ll probably look into that. It makes me wonder, is passion an emotion in itself or the intensity of certain emotions…?

@LeilaniLane Shakey Boy would often rewrite entire plays, not uncommon for him to alter a theme.
On a related note, my English Literature teacher at school, his name, William Shakespeare.

@ucme. Okay, thats true.
Ouch! That’s actually kind of funny, but sad at the same time. Was that the name he was born with?

It was funny for us students, but sad for him because we teased him mercilessly for years.
We, of course, were meant to call him “sir” but in the end he settled for “Bill”
Good teacher though, alas, poor Billy, I knew him well :D

Haha. I’d hate to be that teacher. :P
Bill, out of all the names he could have picked…
I wonder why he decided to become an English teacher. O.o

I don’t think it’s really about love or hate, but more about adolescence, immature infatuation, and parental control over children.

Yes, I may be looking at this through modern eyes, but in many ways these are timeless issues.

@zenvelo Parental control over children? Wasn’t expecting that one. Its wonderful that old books can be looked at through new lenses. We can still use the same works of art to visualize many different ideas.

I wish my school course was more like Fluther, lol. I wish that the students would actually want to discuss things like this instead of just doing the minimum. Not that all of them are like that… just a lot of them are. So, as much as I agree with Romeo and Juliet being about lots of different things, its sadly not up for debate in my class. I should probably get some of the other students to make Fluther accounts haha. :)

@LeilaniLane There are some who say hate is ultimately a product of fear, and that all of one’s actions can be described as either based on love or fear.

“My only love sprung from my only hate,”

Said Juliet when she finds out that Romeo is a Montague. Love and hate as most of know can be felt with equal passion but what Shakespeare does is illustrates that a love born out of hate is the most passionate of loves to the point of willing to die for that love they have for each other. So love in this story trumps hate.

@Yetanotheruser Fascinating. :3
@Cruiser Well, maybe I should get to know one of my enemies a bit more lol. :P I never thought of it that way before. I knew love won at the end but, I guess I leaned more towards thinking it was about hate.

Thanks for your thoughts! :D

@LeilaniLane That is why I think it was more about love because even though they hate each others families and they hate that this feud between their families prevents them from ever being together, their love is even greater than all of that even greater than the hatred they must feel that they must die in love that to continue live in knowing that love they have which surely would have let hate triumph over their love.

Ahhhhhh…

I think the difficulty comes from an apples oranges way of thinking. It isn’t about love or hate. Both are represented in the story, but that is not what it is about. It is a trajedy. It is about loss. It is about social behaviors. Love and hate are supporting roles.

@LeilaniLane Good question. I don’t think I ever saw passion as anything else but a feeling.
Passion is also a noun.
I have a passion for
I have a desire for
I have lust for
I have compassion for
Only thing with passion is that it can change a little with the context. I am passionate about not going to the party, or I am passionate about going to the party.

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love! (Prince Escalus, 5:13)

Romeo and Juliet is a play about contrasts—how each contrast plays off its opposite. Along with some quotes above about contrasts, there are many more. In one, Romeo says:
Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O anything of nothing first created!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this. (1:1)

Friar Lawrence’s opening speech to the sunrise in 2:3 is another example. If you read the play and look for contrasts, it’s so frequent that if anyone asks to pick one, it doesn’t make sense. In the night, Juliet comes out and Romeo calls her the sun. In the daytime, Juliet asks the night to hurry up, talks about Romeo becoming tiny stars when he dies- so beautiful that people ignore the sun. The play is full of contrasts.

Both opposites exist, both exist within a relationship, and extremes destroy. Friar says over and over, “Find a balance.”

If I was forced to pick between love or hate, I’d pick love—only because every single death is really about love. Mercutio dies protecting his friend, Tybalt dies protecting the honor and love of his family, Romeo dies for love, Juliet for love. Even Paris dies for love, that poor fool.

In 2:3 Romeo says:
Oh, let us hence. I stand on sudden haste.
Friar responds:
Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.

Love it.
I’m gay and I kinda relate to their feelings. About the extreme-disagreement-from-parents-and-society part.

@Here2_4 I totally agree. There’s much more to it then hate and love. Which is why I’m thinking about making another post asking others on here what they think Romeo and Juliet is truly about. Its just, in my class we’ve been discussing the importance of those two human emotions in Shakespeare’s play. This caught my interest because, I guess I’m interested in human emotions, moods, feelings, and attitudes. It helps me understand others and myself better.

@Pandora I’m definitely going to think about this. Thanks so much for your input!

@linguaphile Wow. I’m so glad the users on Fluther have so many different takes on this piece of art. I’ve said it a lot, but its true each time. I never thought of it that way before, lol. I’m going to talk about that in my discussion post. Thanks so much for posting! Also, the quotes were very helpful. :D

@wsxwh111 Lol, thanks. If I write an essay about how Romeo and Juliet is relevant in today’s society, I might just talk about that. :3 I hope you have a wonderful day!

@zenvelo “I don’t think it’s really about love or hate, but more about adolescence, immature infatuation, and parental control over children.”

I agree with you. It’s been a long time since I’ve read Romeo and Juliet, but IIRC there are a couple things in the text about immature infatuation. Juliet is supposed to be a few weeks before her 14th birthday, and her mother warns her against early marriages, that she was a young mother. Early in the play Romeo is all dewy-eyed over this other girl, Rosaline. Rosaline takes a vow of chastity, and he falls for Juliet REALLY quickly, like maybe a couple days after.

The deaths of Romeo and Juliet were tragic and totally preventable. Pretty much everyone in the play does something silly and senseless that leads to them dying. The families have no idea how the feud started or why they are enemies, but they keep taunting and killing each other. Romeo and Juliet have a melodramatic teenage romance that lasts only a few days. When you’re a teenager, everything is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD and NOBODY UNDERSTANDS. To them, it seemed like a teenage infatuation was worth killing themselves over. But with their families, like, literally murdering each other, the stakes were pretty high. Having to keep their romance a secret only made it worse. They’re kind of, just, teenagers being teenagers, taken to the logical extreme.

I think the real theme of Romeo and Juliet is how foolishness leads to tragedy, and people are innately foolish. So stuff like this will keep happening again and again. Their deaths were preventable and inevitable at the same time.

Movies like Twilight lean pretty heavily on Romeo and Juliet for the forbidden romance thing. The forbidden romance part of the story is just the teenage perspective. The bigger picture is how people will keep bringing tragedy on themselves, because it’s in our nature. At its best, literature makes you scratch your head over stuff like that, and try to apply the lessons to real life.

@Haleth “I think the real theme of Romeo and Juliet is how foolishness leads to tragedy, and people are innately foolish.”

I really like that. :3 Its profound.

I was just thinking that Juliet reminds me somewhat of Ana in Frozen.

Although, whats with the stereotype on teenagers? We aren’t all like that. Were you like that? O.o

@hud Inde-ed.

@LeilaniLane When I was a teenager, I thought I was mature, worldly, and sophisticated. But I had, like, zero emotional maturity.

@Haleth Haha. Sort of sounds like me. Except for being worldly. I’m inside too much. :P

Anyways, thanks to all who responded!