Romeo And Juliet Who's To Blame Analysis

Who is to Blame in Romeo and Juliet
As the New York Times bestselling author Maria V. Snyder once said, “Trusting is hard. Knowing who to trust, even harder.” Often we misjudged people, and sometimes we place our trust in the wrong person. It is all to easy too place your trust in someone and have them lead you astray. This is true for the title characters in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The young couple trusted Romeo’s confessor, Friar Lawrence, but it ended up being that trust that got them in trouble. Friar Lawrence, who was constantly giving them bad advice, didn't think his plans through, and didn't always put the couple’s well being first, and married them, is the individual most responsible for the tragic deaths of Romeo
Friar Lawrence did not marry them because he thought they were in love or that they would be happy together; he did it because he wanted to unite their two families. He even says “In one respect I'll thy assistant be; / For this alliance may so happy prove, / To turn your households' rancour to pure love.”(2.3.90-93). Even though bringing the two families together and preventing a multitude of deaths in the future is a good thing, Friar Lawrence led Romeo and Juliet to believe he was marrying them because he thought it was a good idea and that he cared about what happened to them. It also could be said that the reason he was so eager to help Juliet to not marry Paris, was because he did not want to do something as unholy as marry the same girl twice. Juliet even has her misgivings about Friar Lawrence’s intentions when she says “What if it be a poison which the friar / Subtly hath minister’d to have me dead, / Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd / Because he married me before to Romeo? / I fear it is;” (4.3.24-28). The whole time that Friar Lawrence was ‘helping’ them it was not really them that he was putting first, even though that is what he led them to
He is the force most responsible for Romeo’s and Juliet’s death because he is the force that they did not think was working ageist them. Friar Lawrence didn’t even know just how much he was working ageist them. Friar Lawrence wasn’t just lying to Romeo and Juliet he was lying to himself, about how he was treating the two teenagers and justifying actions he knew was wrong. Sometimes not telling someone the whole truth is even worse then lying. Romeo and Juliet trusted Friar Lawrence but in the end he let them down. Often the blows that hit us the hardest are the ones that come from a person we