Young people tend to fall for a person and then claim that they are in love. The theme of love is very common throughout literature. In his seventh Letter to a Young Poet, Rainer Rilke focuses on his young poet’s emotion of love and how Rilke feels about young love. Rilke argues that many people, but specially younger people tend to fall in love and then fling themselves at each other. Rilke claims that young people are not truly in love when they claim to be in love because they are inexperienced. Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet supports it. In this play, two young lovers sacrifice their identity, family, and even their own lives for a love that is inexperienced. Although Romeo and Juliet say that they are in love with each other, that is not true. Their love is fake because both of them are young, inexperienced on what true love is, and they rush things, causing their awful deaths.
A theme that Rilke presents in his letter 7 is that love is difficult but especially for young people because they are beginners at everything. Rilke writes to the young poet, “That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not capable of love: it is something they learn.”(5) Clearly, young love is difficult because young people have not gone through what love really is so they are not capable to be truly in love. The point Rilke is trying to make here is that young lovers are not truly in love because of their lack of experience and because they still have a lot more to learn. Further more, Rilke argues that, “But this is what young people are so often and so disastrously wrong in doing: they fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them.”(6) This suggests that young lovers usually give themselves at each other when they think they are in love, just like Romeo and Juliet did at the Capulet party. Rilke is trying to make the point that young lovers easily fall in love and then tend to give themselves to each other. In conclusion, Rilke’s idea that love is difficult but especially for young lovers and that they are not truly in love is clearly presented by making it clear when writing back to the young poet.
A theme that Shakespeare presents in Romeo and Juliet is that when young people claim to be in love, their just stuck on the idea of love but not truly in love. Shakespeare presents this theme through the Friar when he’s talking with Romeo about his lost feelings for Rosaline and new feelings for Juliet. The friar says, “Young men’s love then lies not truly in their hearts but in their eyes.”(2.3.71-72) Clearly, young men lie when they say they are in love with their hearts, because their love is actually in their eyes. The point Shakespeare is trying to make here is that just like Romeo claimed to truly be in love Rosaline, he was able to fall in love with Juliet and forget about Rosaline because the love he felt was not in his heart, he just had the idea of being in love with Rosaline but wasn’t truly in love. Additionally, this theme is also presented when
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