Love and Conflict
By Marcus Lee
Introduction
At first sight the topics of love and lust may seem alike in that they may be viewed as the same emotion but in actual fact there are many disparities between the two. Love is an emotional attraction due to a strong sense of affection and attachment whereas lust is simply an attraction based purely on a physical and often sexual level. Several texts extracted from three different love-related writings have been found to demonstrate the perfect comparison between love and lust. One such extract is from the infamous Shakespearean play, Romeo & Juliet. The second is from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and the third from the song Everything written by Michael Bublé. Through a number of different poetic techniques, the writers of these texts have positioned their audiences to see the disparity between love and lust.
First Argument
The extract, taken from the second scene of act two in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet deals with the idea that Romeo and Juliet’s relationship was based merely on a physical attraction, lust. Throughout this play Shakespeare has emphasized the idea of love at first sight but he has done this by portraying Romeo and Juliet’s “love” to be based around a physical attraction or in other words, lust. For this reason, within this particular extract, Romeo is seen to be constantly expressing his love for, not so much Juliet herself but rather her beauty. Shakespeare has successfully established this message of lust by incorporating a number of poetic techniques throughout this extract, one technique being symbolism. Symbolism can be seen to convey the distinction between love and lust in Romeo & Juliet. This technique has been demonstrated in the four lines, “That thou her maid art far more fair than she. Be not her maid since she is envious. Her vestal livery is sick and green and none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.” This section of the extract compares Juliet to her maid in order to...