Theme- Romeo and Juliet Connection

            Though there are many themes in this book, one in particular stood out to me because it is similar to one revealed in Romeo and Juliet, which I am reading in English class. After stealing the basket of food from Otto Sturm and sharing it with the other thieves, Rudy and Liesel are walking to the Strums’ to return the basket. Death remarks that later on, though Rudy smiles now at his success at the expense of Otto, “In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer−proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water” (Zusak 164). He is commenting on the fact that humans consist of both good and bad qualities and that everyone is a contradiction of himself or herself because no one is truly good or bad. Most people are good sometimes and bad sometimes, because both reside inside of them. The “just add water” means that all you have to do is add a certain circumstance or put the person in a certain situation for one to come out over the other. In Friar Laurence’s soliloquy in Romeo and Juliet, the Friar says something similar. When talking about plants and herbs, he says, “Within the infant rind of this weak flower / Poison hath residence and medicine power” (II.iii.23-24) meaning that both good and bad can reside in one thing, even something as simple as a flower. He is using this as a metaphor for all things−we as humans tend to want to label things “good” or “bad” and not budge from our opinion. But what Shakespeare is trying to suggest is that all things have good and bad in them. There might be more of one than the other, but no one is truly entirely evil or purely good. Each person contains both, either showing depending on the circumstances. Both stories are saying that sometimes a person may act good in some situations and bad in others because everyone has both good and bad inside of them. I found it fascinating that both of the pieces of literature I was reading included this theme.