Dai 1 Kevin Dai Word Count: 1146 Compare and Contrast (Romeo and Pip) Love is a topic that innumerable authors delight in writing about. In each of their masterpieces, love is a driving force in he or she’s makeup. The main characters of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Dicken’s Great Expectations, Romeo and Pip, are no exception. Although Romeo and Pip live in very different environments, love affects their maturity, loyalty, and fluctuating mood. Love drastically changes both Pip and Romeo’s maturity throughout both works. In the beginning of the play, Romeo sorrowfully conveys that Rosaline “[lives uncharmed] [f]rom Love’s weak childish bow…”(Kinsella 777). Romeo, starting off deep in ecstacy, describes love as a “weak childish bow”
Pip’s addictive love for Estella pulls his loyalty so far from Joe that he only thinks about her during a rare visit from his old friend. In the Friar’s cell, Romeo bawls and asks the friar to tell him “what vile part of [his] anatomy / …[his] name lodge[s]…[so] that [he] may sack / [t]he hateful mansion” (Kinsella 832). Romeo’s strong loyalty tells him he must kill “the hateful mansion” before he will consider anyone else after Juliet. As Joe nurses Pip back to health, Pip tells Joe to “[l]ook angry at [him],...[s]trike [him],…[and] [t]ell [him] of [his] ingratitude” (Dickens 363). When Pip asks for punishment, it’s remediation of guilt for letting love wrench him immeasurably from the loyalty of Joe, who truly unconditionally loved him. While Romeo’s loyalty is shaky but consistent to the end and Pip’s causes steadfastness to others to diminish, love is the factor behind both. Love in both characters significantly fluctuates mood within them. When Juliet asks Romeo how he climbed the orchard walls, Romeo replies that “[w]ith love's light wings did [he] o'er-perch these walls; / [f]or stony limits cannot hold love out…”(Kinsella 798). Romeo conveys an elated and overconfident mood when he exaggerates in his “love-high” state. At the first visit to Mrs. Havisham’s place, Estella’s insults caused Pip to cry and “[a]s [he] cried, [he] kicked the wall, and took a hard twist at [his] hair” (Dickens 48). Pip’s feelings developed for Estella during his