My Life with the Walter Boys

The Shakespearean tragedy Romeo and Juliet is a motif within My Life With the Walter Boys that explores the complex nature of love and relationships. The Prologue opens with Jackie criticizing the play’s doomed lovers for their impulsive and emotional decision-making: “I’ll admit that Romeo and Juliet were passionate. But, their passion was so intense, so destructive, it got them killed” (1). Jackie juxtaposes herself with Romeo and Juliet: Jackie is deliberate, a planner, someone who does not let her emotions direct her actions. Jackie looks down on their passionate, if ill-fated, romance as a failure to plan and think ahead: “There was no preparation—or even thinking, for that matter. They just did, regardless of the consequences. When you don’t plan ahead, things get messy. […] a messy love life was the last thing I needed” (2). By closing the prologue with this declaration, she foreshadows that a messy love life is exactly what awaits her.

Jackie uses Romeo and Juliet as a framework for her understanding of love and relationships because, as she comes to find, love is often far more difficult to plan for than she thought. Though she judges Romeo and Juliet for their impulsivity, Jackie eventually discovers that love is an uncontrollable force and that she can’t plan or prepare for it.