2016年10月7日星期五

Blog post #3: Reflection

In the article Elinor Fuchs’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play, the author explains what how pattern and Images related to a play. In the play Romeo and Juliet, it tells a family feud happened in a city called Verona between family Montague and family Capulet. A romantic but sad ended love story happens between children of these two families, Romeo and Juliet. Each scene in this play follows a pattern and they all have their own images.

“We must take the assumption that in the world of the play there are no accidents. Nothing occurs ‘by chance,’not even chance”. If you carefully read the play Romeo and Juliet, you will see that this play follows a fixed pattern. Pattern includes actions and time. For the action part, in the 1st act of this play, it starts with a fight between these two families. When we thing about this act, the writer places a fight scene in the very beginning of this play is not just used to tell audience about the setting but also tells the style of Act 1: full of fights and obstructions between our two main characters. Compare with Act 2, which tells about the forbidden love of Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 expresses a much more soft and romantic emotion. It shows how two young people get to know each other and how they fall in love. As a contrast, Act 3 starts with a fight scene again. This time, the conflict and fight gets even more violent. Tybalt and Mercutio’s death makes this act gets into a higher level. Then in Act 4, Juliet drinks the fake poison after asking forgiveness from her father. This act shows how loyal and steadfast their love is, which also means this whole act is related to love again. Till now, we can find a pattern from characters’ actions that this play shows an alternate emotion of fights and love. Also, another unseparable part of Pattern is the Time. Looking through the whole plat we can clearly separate love parts and fight parts that both of the two fight parts happens in morning and all love stories happen at night. In the balcony scene, Romeo climes up to Juliet’s balcony and tells his love, Juliet responses: “ O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable”(2.2.108-110). For the two fight scenes, the first one refers to the lines that Benvolio says: “Is the day so young?” “But new struck nine.”(1.1.150-151). The other one is said also said by Benvolio: “And if we meet we shall not scape a brawl, For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring”(3.1.3-4). The reason why the author puts fights and love in to different time is because day times and night times are used to express different emotion. For the day times, hot summer days in Verona makes people’s blood stirring, which causes more fight. Also, lots of people come out at day times so it is hard for our secret lovers to see each other. For the night times, people stay at home, and the night is quiet and mysterious. Lots of secret things happen at night, which provide a perfect place for Romeo and Juliet express their love.


In this whole play, it is separated into three images, beginning, climax, and ending. The beginning tells the story that Romeo goes to his enemy’s ball and sees his lover. Even though there are people trying to stop their love, they still deeply fall in love with each other. For the middle image, there are lots of changes happen. The image of the climax is chaotic. People’s death, Romeo being banished, and propose from stranger all change every character’s attitude. Especially Juliet, she realizes Romeo is not as brave and mature as he looks, but she still chooses to stand on her husband’s side. In the last image, both Romeo and Juliet died, so does Lady Montague and Paris. If the ending is a real image, it must be an image of sun rises up from dark clouds. Everything is clear, there is no more feud, and our star-cross’d lovers can finally be together in their tomb. “For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”(5.5.311-312)


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