West Side Story Anaylsis essays

West Side Story Anaylsis essays As a contemporary musical, West Side Story differs from Romeo and Juliet in form and detail, but stays true to the tragedy of innocent love caught in a complex social web that predestines its demise. In West Side Story, love at first sight between Tony and Maria set off a tragic chain of events which bring the story to its heartbreaking conclusion. Maria is Puerto Rican, Tony, Polish-American; they are young, innocent, rebellious-indifferent to the societal boundaries which they are trespassing. Like Romeo and Juliet, love is all that matters to. Inevitably, social reality intrudes upon the inter-racial lovers idealized world. Instead of the warring Montagues and Capulets, West Side Story revolves around two street gangs, the Sharks and the Jets. At this point in time, the impoverished white immigrant culture, which Tony represents, is being hreatened by the influx of new immigrant populations, especially the Puerto Ricans, who are beginning new lives in America. The young street gangs that arise from these ghettos demonstrate their frustrations and tensions through turf wars and street fights. Tony is a member of the Jets, the American gang. Maria's brother, Bernardo, and her Puerto Rican suitor, Chino, are members of the Sharks. Gangs are one of the results of poverty, discrimination and urban deterioration. Some experts believe that young people, undereducated and without access to good jobs, become frustrated with their lives and join gangs as an alternative to boredom, hopelessness and devastating poverty. Studies have attempted to determine why gangs plague some communities but there has been no definitive answer. As a result, people working to solve gang problems have great difficulty. They find the situation overwhelming, and the violence continues. The reason for some of this vilolence has to deal with the differences in culture between the two gangs and there ethinicity. As we have learned in socilogy cultur...