That was TOTALLY Uncalled For.

On Friday, I walked into class with a frown on my face. Not only did we have a quiz on the assigned reading, but we also had a vocabulary quiz (ew). Normally, I don’t really care about the vocabulary quizzes -they’re fairly easy. But on the night before, as I was writing my vocabulary definitions, I stumbled across a spoiler about Gatsby and it made me mad. In class when I jokingly expressed my disappointment, Mrs. Valentino (roughly) exclaimed, “Well, we all know how Romeo and Juliet ends -it’s not that different”. This is where my blog idea stemmed from. Today, I will be comparing the iconic Romeo and Juliet to the Great Gatsby. 

There are a lot of parallels between the two famous pieces. The most obvious is the concept of a “forbidden romance”. Obviously, Romeo and Juliet are forbidden to be together- which ultimately leads to their downfalls. It’s not that Gatsby and Daisy are forbidden to be together, it’s that they can’t. Although they used to be in a relationship, Gatsby was drafted and Daisy got married to Tom. Also, like Romeo and Juliet, Gatsby and Daisy live near each other- which is a constant reminder of the pain and longing that come with this unfortunate situation. We can even find Gatsby peering across the bay towards Daisy’s house.

Unfortunately, we still need to address the elephant in the room. Like any romantic tragedy, someone has to die. We know that both Romeo and Juliet die in that piece, so obviously either Daisy or Gatsby -or both­- may die in the end. Unfortunately, I can tell you that someone does in fact die. Thanks, literarydevices.net.