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West Side Story

The expression everything old is new again is most applicable to the themes and story of West Side Story. The main themes are love, tragedy and justice but they also involve an exploration of urban gang life. The story itself, “a tale of star-crossed lovers on the verge of finding happiness together only to meet with tragedy”, is pretty much a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with modern settings and characters (Modernizing 1). However, where Shakespeare brilliantly used language to make his story come to life, the creators of West Side Story use music, song, and dance. In other words, the major themes and drama of the play are new (modern) but they are based on old (non-modern) themes and drama, least of which is the comment on the futility of feuding families and/or gangs.

Instead of two warring families as in Romeo and Juliet, we are presented with two warring street gangs in West Side Story, Americans versus Puerto Ricans. Like the families of Romeo and Juliet, the gangs and their differences represent the obstacle to the love that develops between Tony, a Polish-American, and Maria, a Puerto Rican. Like Romeo and Juliet their love is able to transcend the social boundaries in which they are entrapped but also like Shakespeare’s lovers their happiness must end in tragedy. In Shakespeare’s play duels are used to convey the gritty, tough nature of the warring battles between the two opposing families and their supporters. In West Side Story, music, song, and dance are the dramatic elements used to convey the gritty, rough nature of street gang life, “In West Side Story, dance carries forth as much of the action as the dialogue, music, and lyrics; it is through the gritty nature of the choreography that the frustration, passion and recklessness experienced by street gangs is expressed to the audience” (Modernizing 1). On the flip side, tender and po

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West Side Story. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:47, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1686584.html