In Romeo and Juliet, the Capulet family was a wealthy, stable, and well respected family. The Capulet story took place in the late 1500’s in Verona, Italy. In The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds, Tillie’s family was a very poor family that had fallen apart and that everyone seemed to laugh at. This story takes place in the mid 70’s. Though it seems these two families couldn’t be more than polar opposites, they had their similarities as well as their differences.

     These two families are similar in that the mother’s weren’t all that involved in their daughters’ lives. In Romeo and Juliet, the mother in the Capulet family didn’t even know Romeo and Juliet had been married. And if she had heard, she wouldn’t have cared at all – she probably would have banned Romeo from ever seeing Juliet again. In Tillie’s story, Betty doesn’t really care about her daughter’s life. Her daughter wants to study science, and is a very smart girl. But the mother doesn’t care. She even makes Tillie stay home from school to work around the house, even if Tillie really wants to go learn. Neither mother really cared about what was important to their daughter, but cared much more about the reputation of the family and money.

     Both stories end in tragedy as well. In Romeo and Juliet, both main characters end up dying in the end. In The Marigold story, the drunk mother who hasn’t had that great of a life killed the family pet and ran the house like a “concentration camp”. She’s even willing to let her own daughter die in order to save money. That’s how the story ends, and you don’t find out what happens. So even beside all the differences between these two families, there are some similarities.