Fate vs. Freewill - Romeo and Juliet

Freewill: Choices and decisions

What is freewill? Freewill is a voluntary choice or decision. It’s the freedom of human beings to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or divine intervention. We as humans make choices and decisions everyday and all the choices and decisions that have been made are totally up to us. One play that goes into detail about freewill is William Shakespeare’s play: Romeo and Juliet. This play is a romance/tragedy about two star-crossed lovers (Romeo and Juliet) making their own choices and decisions. Till one of their choices they make brings an end to the both of them. Ultimately, Shakespeare is showing us in the play that we are humans all act on our own freewill. When Romeo goes to the Capulet party, it was pretty obvious that he made the choice to go himself. Romeo knew it wasn’t right to go to his enemy’s party and he knew that if he got caught then things won’t end well. Romeo was imagining all the bad things that happen if he went in and to back it up he told Mercutio about the dream he had. The dream was about something bad happening. Like for example: his death. Nobody forced Romeo to in to the Capulet party. He made the decisions himself. Fate kind of played a part warning him that it, might not be safe going to the party. But Romeo has a mind of his own and his mind made the choice to go and just ignore the warning. After the party and when Romeo and Juliet meet, they fell in love and decided to get married. It wasn’t an arranged marriage, it was pretty straight-forward that they both wanted to be with each other. Their plan was to be married at Friar Laurence’s cell without anyone knowing, the only exception was the Nurse and Friar Laurence. “If thy bent of love be honorable. Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow, By one that I’ll procure to come to thee, Where and what time thou wilt perform rite.” (Shakespeare, 95)
Romeo and Juliet decided themselves that they were going to get married to each other, knowing that their parents would not approve. Fate did not bring them to this decision. It was the act of freewill that bought them to come to this decision.

After the marriage Romeo gets banished and Juliet decides to “take” her life so she can be with Romeo. She finds out she is to marry Paris (after she already married Romeo) and she doesn’t want to. She then seeks help from Friar Laurence at his cell and then threatens to really kill herself if he does not help. He then gives her fake poison so she may appear dead and then he will send for Romeo to come and be there for when Juliet wakes up. She was very skeptical about taking the fake poison because she wondered if it was real poison and she had so many thoughts about the plan and how it might not work. She was right, the plan went awry and didn’t very well.
“Tell me not, Friar, that thou hear’st of this, unless thou tell me how I may prevent it. If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help, Do thou but call my resolution wise, And with this knife I’ll help it presently.” (Shakespeare)
It was pretty clear that Juliet did not want to marry Paris, so she desperately made the choice herself to fake her death. There were other options that she could’ve have chose from. Like for example: marry Paris instead and forget about Romeo because no one else knew about her marrying Romeo. But she decided to take it to an extreme because she loves Romeo that much. Through all the conflict that happened within Romeo and Juliet shows us that fate does not set a road for us to take and that freewill gives us choices that we have to make ourselves. We as humans all act on our own freewill, we make choices; some are good and some are bad. This is probably why the play: Romeo and Juliet is relevant to today’s lifestyle. We as humans live our lives learning from the choices and decisions that we make.