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Ms. Muzaurieta English 9 Honors, Period #
3/24/11
West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet, and A Raisin in the Sun Essay
Who’s That? Oh, It’s One of Them.
When people hear the word “loyalty,” they immediately think of it as being a positive trait.
Usually, loyalty is considered to be an admirable characteristic because it is defined as pledging
allegiance to a person or cause. This is certainly a true statement; that is the definition of loyalty. On
the other hand, loyalty can be a destructive force. William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet presents a
major conflict caused by ignorant familial loyalty. Arthur Laurents’s West Side Story shows how
strong, ethnic allegiances destroy many lives and additionally cause problems for new immigrants.
Lastly, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun portrays a damaging side of racial loyalty that the
African-American characters are forced to confront. Because several characters from all three plays
manifest overpowering fidelity to a particular group, they are blocked from living their lives with
open minds and open hearts. Indeed, loyalty can have a dark side, especially when there is an
excessive amount of it.
In William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, several characters meet their deaths primarily from
wounds of swords. In truth, the daggers were not the real weapons that caused the numerous
deaths: overwhelming and damaging loyalty was the true weapon. Familial allegiance due to a past
feud caused the Montague and Capulet families to be armed with hatred for the opposing family
from the very start of play. This blind loyalty caused family members to cling to their inherited hate
and to react harshly and aggressively when interacting with the other family. Shakespeare never
directly stated why the families were feuding, nor did he reveal how long ago the feud began,
suggesting that the ingrained loyalty was simply pointless and habitual. For example, Tybalt, a cousin
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of Juliet, wants to kill Romeo in Act I, only because Romeo is a Montague. Another example
emphasizes the same idea, when Mercutio is killed unnecessarily for being a friend of Romeo. As he
dies, he angrily curses both families for continuing the feud, screaming, “A plague o’ both your
houses” (Shakespeare). Both the Montagues and Capulets judge each other’s relatives and friends
based simply on their names, and this causes them to automatically reject seeing the others as fellow
human beings. When she speaks to Romeo from her balcony, Juliet renounces the idea of family
loyalty, which blocked the Capulets’ ability to recognize the Montagues as individuals. She ponders,
“Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? …what’s in a name? …Romeo would,
were he not Romeo called, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title”
(Shakespeare). Subsequently, as Romeo and Juliet defy the ingrained and damaging familial loyalty,
Romeo actually becomes more accepting of the Capulets, and wants both sides to drop the feud and
live harmoniously. Romeo tells Tybalt of his changed attitude, “But [I] love thee better than thou
canst devise till thou shalt know the reason of my love; And so, good Capulet, which name I tender
as dearly as mine own, be satisfied” (Shakespeare). However, it isn’t until Romeo and Juliet commit
suicide together that the families realize that the feud is senseless and let go of their destructive
loyalty. Shakespeare illustrated that it is difficult to relinquish ingrained, hateful allegiances, but it
should not take a catastrophe to force people to let go of them.
Because many of the characters in Arthur Laurents’s West Side Story are excessively loyal to
their ethnic groups, they demonstrate, in two ways, how damaging ethnic loyalty can be. First, it is
obvious that the violent behavior of the two ethnically different gangs demonstrates that too much
loyalty leads to violence and even death. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the young men
from both gangs feel the need to belong to a group and need to feel accepted by others. Perhaps this
need causes gang members to develop close-mindedness and perceived hatred toward others who
are not like them. West Side Story refers to New York City gangs of the 1950s, and the tension caused
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by Puerto-Rican immigrants. In this case, the gang of the blue-collar, American Jets is threatened by
the gang of newly immigrated, Puerto-Rican Sharks. The hatred the Jets have for the Sharks in
return generates the Sharks’ enmity for the Jets. It is illustrated to be a continuous cycle of hostility.
This horrible, strong pull of gang allegiance causes death and sorrow on both sides, as the gang
leaders, Riff and Bernardo, are killed simply for this pointless reason. Furthermore, the excessive
ethnic loyalty causes heartache after Tony, a member of the Jets, is needlessly killed, and his lover,
Puerto-Rican Maria, is devastated by the loss of her lover. She shouts at both gangs, “You all killed
him… not with bullets and guns. With hate” (Laurents). Maria’s words emphasize the stupidity of
the excessive loyalties of both gangs, which led to hatred and death. Like Shakespeare, Laurents
believed that a tragedy is needed to shock the hate and destructive loyalty out of people. Second, on
a more subtle level, it is illustrated that ethnic loyalties become roadblocks to individual growth. The
character of the young, Puerto-Rican woman, Anita, is an example of a new immigrant who desires
to become an American, but faces obstacles that are put up by her own people. While Anita is
singing the song “America,” she shares her hope of changing her lifestyle as she expresses that as an
American she is “free to be anything… [she] ...choose[s]” (Bernstein). However, when she mentions
the positive aspects of living in America and her dreams of one day having equal status to all
Americans, the Puerto-Rican men try to convince her that her vision is flawed. They want her to stay
loyal to her Puerto-Rican heritage and give up her hope of ever being accepted by American society.
Later on in the story, Anita still seems conflicted by her ethnic loyalty as opposed to her personal
growth, as she orders Maria to “stick to… [her] …own kind” (Bernstein). Anita demonstrates that
breaking away from ethnic loyalty can be a difficult process. Tony is an example of a character who
overcame his internal struggle of his need for acceptance by his gang. He had developed a deeper
self-identity and more self-esteem once he broke away from the Jets, and he became more accepting
of a diverse world. By falling in love with Puerto-Rican Maria, it clearly shows the positive change of
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his nature. Through the use of these characters, Laurents was successful in proving that people
waste their energy hating other people simply because of their differences.
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun depicts how excessive loyalty to one’s race can
prevent the expansion of one’s tolerance of diversity. As an illustration, Hansberry uses the
character, Mrs. Johnson, to represent the many African-Americans who were afraid of changes in
American society when the Civil Rights Movement was beginning. When the Youngers want to
move to Clybourne Park, a white neighborhood, Mrs. Johnson attempts to dissuade them from
moving there. She passes on stories of bombings of and threats to African-American families caused
by the destructive, powerful, and prejudiced loyalty of Caucasian Americans. She urges the Youngers
to stick with their own kind in their own neighborhood and tries to rob them of their hope. She says
to Mama that the headlines will read, “NEGROES INVADE CLYBOURNE PARK– BOMBED”
(Hansberry). However, Mama refuses to listen to Mrs. Johnson, continuing with her plan to move,
which sent a message to the African Americans of the 1960s. They sensed they needed to be strong
to break through the boundaries of racial loyalties of the whites as well as their own. A great
example of a character who goes against her traditional African-American upbringing and forms her
own identity is Beneatha. Her goal is to not conform to the African-American or Caucasian people
but to identify with her original African roots. At one point, she exclaims she hates “assimilationist
Negroes” (Hansberry). She intensely studies African culture, history, and language. She physically
changes her hairstyle and dress to reflect African culture, and she even re-names herself with an
African name. This play encouraged African-Americans of the 1960s to not accept or be loyal to the
inferior definition that society placed on their race.
In conclusion, the plays of Shakespeare, Laurents, and Hansberry show the ways in which
excessive loyalty, whether it be racial, socio-economic, ethnic, or familial, can be undoubtedly
damaging. The authors display how, from one end of the negative spectrum to the other, destructive
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loyalty can cause a range of actions from making an ignorant judgment of to possessing pure hatred
for a person or group. The playwrights present characters who have clouded lenses through which
they view others because of overpowering loyalty, which blocks them from being open-minded and
seeing people on an individual basis. Even today, the relevant themes of these plays challenge
people. The themes challenge people to ask themselves if they are “too loyal” to a group or mindset.
The three plays get in people’s faces and force them to question themselves, with sometimes unclear
answers: where have they excluded others because of cultural differences? Where have they been
prejudiced against others? Where have they failed to see the goodness in a person because they are
not part of the group? Perhaps a teenager may see him/herself as close-minded because they are
part of a clique at school that shuts out and puts down other students who do not meet the clique’s
“requirements” for fitting in. Perhaps people may see themselves as prejudiced because they are part
of the group of United States citizens who tightly grasp what their definition of an “American” is,
and they negatively stereotype people who may not fit within their criteria. Maybe they believe all
Muslim Americans are terrorists and cannot be trusted. Maybe they feel threatened and therefore
discriminate against all Hispanic Americans because they feel these immigrants are in the country
illegally and will steal their jobs. Unfortunately, there are so many more types of people, especially
minorities, who are discriminated against every day by those who are “too loyal” to exclusive,
destructive ways. Indeed, the authors raise a sense of compassion and an awareness to the ongoing
need to overcome misdirected loyalty. Perhaps by being more accepting and tolerant, people can
reverse the unjust ways of the world.