For Thursday, May 25, 2000                                      Drummer Column, Gibbs, 705 words

 

 

Drying eyes

 

 

     I love Juliet. My wife knows about it, but she lets it go. I am smitten along with Romeo, and agree with him when he says she has "beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear."

     Each year when we finish the book in my classroom and turn on the Franco Zeffirelli 1968 version with Juliet played by Olivia Hussey -- born in 1951, by the way, which makes her older than I am -- I sit in the back of the darkened room and pine and swoon. To me she represents absolute femininity. The beauty of all women and all things womanly converge in this Shakespearean character (and Olivia), for me at least.

     This year I wept as I watched her meet her Romeo and exchange the first kiss. I'm not much of a romantic, but the story of Romeo and Juliet moves me deeply. The love story is so powerful, and the tragedy is so avoidable that my tears flowed freely.

     I wept for many reasons. For one, this will be the last year that I teach Romeo and Juliet for a while. Next year(s) I will step away from my literature classes to provide technology support and help Benicia High through the Digital Grant's three-year process. I am saying good-bye to a beautiful reign of teaching Lit 1 Honors.

     Coupled with that are tears for the tragedy. The theme played out in Romeo and Juliet is so profoundly important and pervasive that I continue it throughout the rest of the year, through two more stories. The tragedy is the often fractured relationship children have with adults.

     Romeo and Juliet have no intimacy with their parents. Mother and father are concerned people. They mean well, but they don't relate to their kids. They share no emotional bonds. Mother and father remain aloof and expect the kids to grow up on their own. Romeo and Juliet thus turn to surrogate parents. Romeo confides in Friar Lawrence, Juliet trusts in her nurse, and here the trouble begins.

     With good intentions and the full trust of the children in their charge, Lawrence and Nurse lead Romeo and Juliet to their tragic ends. The adults give in to the children's impulsivity. They let them have their way, and it kills them. Romeo says, "Friar, I want to marry a girl today that I met last night," and he says, "O.K." What's with that? Why not insist on waiting? Why not insist on telling the parents? Why agree? The nurse is just as bad. She defies the parents' intention to marry 13-year-old Juliet to Count Paris in two years, and helps her sneak off and marry Romeo. How irresponsible!

     I do not fault the children for discovering the power of love. I do fault the adults for not guiding them in how to handle it.

     Then comes our next play, The Prime of Miss Jean Brody. It is the story of a teacher who has the absolute trust of her children, and with good intentions leads them to disaster. The children believe everything Brody tells them because she is, after all, a teacher. Brody fills their heads first with harmless opinions disguised as facts, and then the opinions turn dangerous. Brody has no idea how lethal her influence is, which makes it all the more deadly because she is not deceiving them. Her destructive guidance comes from the heart. The story represents how children of all ages learn hatred, bigotry, and all sorts of bad ideas from well-meaning figures of authority.

     We finish with Harold and Maude, the story of a depressed boy and his distant, distracted mother. Without adult guidance, Harold loses interest in living. He is on the brink of suicide when he meets Maude, an adult who teaches him to love life, to love himself, and to understand the purpose of his existence. She's one of the good grown-ups, if a bit unorthodox.

     I want my pupils to learn reserve. I want them to be open to ideas, responsive to authority, but with discerning eyes and ears. I want them to develop sound reasoning and logic, and match what the learn against what they know. That's all I ask, and my tears will dry.