#but you have to shed light upon the clownery
That bad article that @cto10121 shared, which accused West Side Story of being more racist than it really is, made an interesting complaint about the ending of the musical.
Among other things, it complained about the fact that Tony’s death is given more dramatic weight than Riff and Bernardo’s deaths or Anita’s sexual assault, arguing death of “the noble white man” is portrayed as the ultimate tragedy.
I think the levels of wrong in that statement could take a while to pick apart. But it does raise a question: why does Tony’s death drive the Jets and the Sharks to reconcile when Riff and Bernardo’s deaths had no such effect?
It makes perfect sense for Tony’s death to be given the most dramatic weight because, at least technically, he and Maria are the protagonists. Even if Bernstein, Sondheim and co. did care more about the gang warfare and social commentary than they did about the love story, this musical is still a Romeo and Julietadaptation.
But in-universe, why does Tony’s death draw the two gangs together? In Romeo and Juliet, the two fathers make peace in the end because the feud has caused the deaths of their only children. But the Jets and the Sharks aren’t Tony and Maria’s parents. Tony’s death is no more shattering a loss to the Jets than Riff’s was; less so, in fact. He wasn’t even a member of the gang anymore. And Maria doesn’t die, but even if she had, what did she matter to the Sharks? She was just Bernardo’s sister.
So is the ending unconvincing? When the gangs reconcile by carrying Tony’s body together, is it more of a forced echo of Shakespeare than a natural conclusion for the characters?
I don’t think so, and I think the answer is easy: the transformative moment isn’t Tony’s death, in and of itself, but Maria’s speech.
After Riff and Bernardo’s deaths, the two gangs were able to just blame each other. But Maria’s monologue of rage after Tony’s death forces them to face the truth: that they’re all to blame for all three of the deaths. Maria tells them plainly that they all killed Tony andBernardoand Riff with their hate. It’s not that “the noble white man’s” death matters more than the deaths of the Latino man or the less noble white man. It’s that a homicidally angry Latina girl gives everyone a harsh wakeup call about why these tragedies happened, and then breaks the cycle of violence when she can’t bring herself to use the gun after all, setting an example for the others.
I won’t argue that it’s an entirely realistic ending (or that Romeo and Juliet’s ending is, for that matter), but I don’t think that article’s complaint about it is valid either.
