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Alec Daneau

Mr. Turley

English I Honors

25 October 2017

Different types of love in modern day and Romeo and Juliet:

There are many different types of love that exist, some being: unrequited, platonic,

romantic, spiritual, narcissistic and familial love. Most of these different types of love exist

between two people or two things. The types of love that are most evident in Romeo and Juliet

are spiritual, romantic, unrequited and familial. The one type of love most evident in Romeo and

Juliet and in modern day is unrequited love or the type of love where one person loves someone

but that person does not love them back.

There are many different examples of unrequited love in modern day but one

example that really stood out was in The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. In the first book of

The Hunger Games trilogy, Peeta reveals that he is in love with Katniss even though she is

already in love with someone else. Peeta talks to Caesar about this subject and was telling him

how he was “pretty sure she didn’t know that he was alive until the reaping.” (Collins 138). This

action represents unrequited love as Peeta loves Katniss, even though she does not love him

back. Therefore, Peeta’s love for Katniss is unrequited love because they are not mutually in love

with each other.

An example of unrequited love in Romeo and Juliet is when Paris wanted to

marry Juliet, but since Tybalt had just recently died, Paris had “no time to woo.” (III, IV,
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Shakespeare). Paris wanted to marry Juliet and had finally recieved approval from Capulet to

marry Juliet a day after she had married Romeo. This is an example of unrequited love because

Paris loves Juliet but Juliet is already committed to loving Romeo. To summarize, this is a

perfect example of unrequited love because Paris do not mutually love each other.

The main difference in these two examples is that in The Hunger Games the

characters are not getting married whereas in Romeo and Juliet they are. The main similarity is

that in The Hunger Games and in Romeo and Juliet the characters are not mutually in love with

the character that loves them. The Hunger Games characters never get married in the first book

whereas the characters in Romeo and Juliet get married after one day of meeting each other

making these examples different from each other. However, comparing these examples, the two

sets of characters in both of my examples never love the character that loves them. The Hunger

Games deals with the people just being in love and not taking things to the next level, but in

Romeo and Juliet they do get married. To back up the similarity point, the characters do not

share mutual relationships because they are in love with someone else. To summarize, there are

many differences and many similarities but the main two examples of these are: the couples do

not get married in the Hunger Games when they do in Romeo and Juliet, and both sets of

characters do not show mutual love for the other person that loves them.

In conclusion, unrequited love is found in Romeo and Juliet and in modern day.

Both sets of characters in the Hunger Games and Romeo and Juliet had one character that loved

the other even though the other character did not love them back. This shows that these

characters did not show mutual love for the person loving them. Thus, making these two

examples forms of unrequited love.

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Work Cited

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Scholastic Inc., 2014.

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. New Haven: Yale UP, 1954. Print