Those familiar with Shakespeare’s plays know that the tragedies usually end with bodies strewn across the stage and shocked surviving characters trying to determine how they will live out the rest of their lives in the aftermath of the bloodbath. (Spoiler alert!) West Side Story, true to its source material Romeo and Juliet, doesn’t disappoint our morbid anticipation–yet the film does diverge pretty significantly from the finale of the tale of the famous doomed lovers.

As noted in West Side Story’s Weekday Warm-up, the film (and all its death) really addresses issues that have not ceased to be relevant to society: the sense and actuality of belonging to a country, teenage delinquency and feelings of inadequacy, and the never-ending war between love and hatred. All of these issues fuel the conflict and killing that occur in the story. The vicious rivalry between the Jets (led by Riff) and the Sharks (led by Bernardo) is fed by their racial differences—at least, on the surface. But both groups completely understand what it feels like to struggle to be accepted by society.

Riff (fourth from left) and the Jets

The Jets, racially white, are only second-generation Americans, sons of immigrants. They don’t have foreign-sounding accents, but there are hints that they have only recently come into what they see as their possession of the west side of town. At the beginning of the film, Riff reminds the Jets how they’ve defended their territory from other gangs: “Now we fought hard for this turf and we ain’t just gonna give it up…The Emeralds claimed it. We shut ’em out. The Hawks, remember, they tried to take it away, and we knocked ’em down to the cellar.” The Jets view the Puerto Rican Sharks in the same way as the Emeralds and the Hawks, but it is also possible to see the Sharks as the Jets—newly arrived young men who want to make a place for themselves in America. In the song “When You’re a Jet,” Riff and the Jets explain how being in the gang gives them a feeling of home: “When you’re a Jet, let ’em do what they can / You’ve got brothers around, you’re a family man! / You’re never alone, you’re never disconnected, you’re home with your own.” While these sons of immigrants find belonging in their gang, it seems like the song implies that they struggle with loneliness and disconnectedness in the world outside (or before) the Jets.

This feeling of having to claw one’s way into an American circle of acceptance is mirrored in the Sharks’ attitude toward America and the reception they are receiving in their new land. Anita, Bernardo’s girlfriend, grumbles, “Once an immigrant, always an immigrant.” But in the super catchy song “America,” Anita and her female Puerto Rican friends exult the positive facets of coming to America, while Bernardo and his male friends negate them with observations of how living conditions in America for Puerto Ricans are less than satisfactory—especially when they are constantly mistreated just for being new to the country and less white than many of those around them. “We had nothing [in Puerto Rico],” Anita insists, so life in America for the Sharks should be an improvement—in theory, their children would be like the boys who make up the Jets, somewhat established in the country, no longer complete foreigners.

What I find so ironic, then, is that if Riff and Bernardo would step back from their testosterone-fueled bickering over whose “turf” the west side is, they might realize that they are almost mirror images of each other—the only real difference is their race. The thing is, Riff only acknowledges that difference between himself and Bernardo and vice versa. Riff and the Jets experience a growing panic that the Puerto Ricans will invade and overtake everything that the Jets’ immigrant parents have fought to win for themselves and their children: “[The Puerto Ricans are] eatin’ our food. They’re breathin’ all the air…We gotta let ’em move in right under our noses and take it all away from us, or else.”

Bernardo and Riff, more alike than they realize, resort to a knife fight to settle their differences.

In one sense then, at the rumble, Bernardo and Riff’s knife fight is really a display of self-defense on both sides (a very offensive self-defense). Bernardo kills Riff because he wants to belong and is sick of being excluded, extorted, accused, misjudged, etc. Riff represents those who have mistreated the Puerto Ricans and stands in the way of Bernardo and his family’s welfare and success in their new world. On the other hand, Riff wants to kill Bernardo out of fear that the acceptance that he has received as a second-generation immigrant is in danger from new immigrants—people who could potentially steal his jobs, women, property, etc. It is tragic that there is no one to intervene between these two misguided and paranoid young men. What a waste their premature deaths are!

Yet Bernardo’s death does not come as a result of someone else’s twisted self-defense. Instead, Tony kills Bernardo out of mindless revenge for killing his closest friend Riff. Chino likewise kills Tony out of revenge as well (either for Bernardo’s death or for stealing Maria from him)—and Shakespeare’s readers know that revenge never works out how the killer intends. There are always consequences and very little fulfillment. Plus, all this carnage usually stems from an issue that could simply be talked over and resolved peacefully.

For Me Then…

At the end of the film, after all the killing, the burden of revenge (and literally the means to do it) falls then to Maria who has several choices: kill herself (which would follow Shakespeare’s story line), kill Chino and continue the cycle of killing (she would then become next in line to die in retribution), or forgive. There are a few tense moments when it would seem that Maria will choose the first two options, taking out as many of the members of both gangs as she can before killing herself: “How many bullets are left, Chino? Enough for you, and you? All of you. You all killed him! And my brother, and Riff. Not with bullets and guns – with hate. Well, I can kill too because now I have hate! How many can I kill, Chino? How many and still have one bullet left for me?” But as she views the regretful, shattered faces gathered around Tony’s dead body, she makes a choice to end the violence, discarding the weapon of revenge. Members of both gangs help to remove Tony’s body, and Maria follows them out as the film closes.

Maria contemplates continuing the cycle of revenge.

But as usual, I suppose, I still have a few lingering questions. After Anita’s lie deceives Tony into believing Maria is dead and making himself vulnerable to Chino’s attack, what does the sisterly relationship between Anita and Maria look like after the film’s close? Does Maria ever find out that Anita carries quite a decent bit of the blame for Tony’s death? If she does, can she forgive what her closest friend has done? Does the peace between the two gangs really last? What does their non-aggressive relationship look like when the new day finally dawns? Throughout the film, the teenagers are referred to as “no good,” “disturbed,” etc.; what is the practical solution to what is basically their kill-or-be-killed life on the streets? Can society save them? Is it even society’s duty to remedy this problem? And here’s my final big question: considering how Romeo and Juliet so famously finishes with the deaths of both protagonists, why does West Side Story not kill off Maria too?

I think that the film uses Maria’s survival to show its viewers that there is a better solution to conflict than violence against oneself or against others. Maria deliberately chooses to approach the deaths of Riff and her brother Bernardo in a different way than Anita does. Anita, while viciously and unacceptably treated at Doc’s, still must know that her lie about Maria’s death will lead to more heartbreak. She either does not care that Tony, the love of her best friend, will be killed; or she doubts Tony is capable of truly loving Maria and figures he’ll just move on. Either way, Anita’s choice to continue the destruction marks her last appearance in the film and is directly contrary to Maria’s final stance on violence.

Violence only begets more violence as the film clearly demonstrates, and the senselessness and tragedy must end somewhere. And, sometimes it just takes one person to put down the weapon and walk away. Maria could have given Chino what he had demanded from Tony as payment for his murder of Bernardo: death. She also could have ended her own pain by shooting herself. But neither of these actions offers a solution to the pain of not being accepted or to the dilemma of teenage angst or to the strife of racism. Only forgiveness can make a fresh start both for the former immigrants and for the new ones.

The iconic “balcony scene” with Tony and Maria–before tragedy strikes.