The adolescent brain is partly to blame for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet because having adolescent brains, they were more prone to making dangerous decisions. In her speech, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore says, “We know that adolescents have a tendency to take risks. They do. They take more risks than children or adults and they are particularly prone to taking risks when they’re with friends. There’s an important drive to become independent from one’s parents and to impress one’s friends in adolescence” (Document A). As described in the quote, the intense and often times irrational drive in Romeo and Juliet’s juvenile brains to take risks and to prove maturity inevitably led to their untimely passing. Additionally, Blakemore later says, “So what’s …show more content…
However, Fate is to be faulted for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet because it was their inevitable fate that placed the lovers in two separate feuding families where conflict was bound to commence should they have tried to be together. In his analysis of psychotherapy, Stephen Diamond writes, "Fate refers to the existential givens of life, those aspects of existence that are immutable, inexorable and inevitable, and over which we can exert little or no control" (Document E). Fate is an abstraction that inhibited Romeo and Juliet's flourishing love. Though they attempted to find a way to be together, Fate had already placed enough impediments for deadly enmity to spring forth from the beginnings of their relationship. Furthermore, Diamond writes, "From an existential perspective, we are "thrown" into life without any choice or responsibility in the matter... How can we hold ourselves responsible for fate?" (Document E). As described by author Stephen Diamond, Fate cannot be opposed. Romeo and Juliet tried to escape their lamentable circumstances, but Fate was the ultimate decision maker and orchestrated a premature death for the star-crossed