West Side Story

“Keep off the world! A gang that don’t own a street is nuthin!”

Action articulates what is supposedly at the root of the gang war–a desire to control territory. However, regardless of how many times the Jets and the Sharks assert their ownership of an area, they will never actually own it. The turf war truly results from a group of marginalized people who are trying to empower themselves by taking agency away from another marginalized group.

“Every single damn night for the last month, I wake up and I’m reaching out.”

As Tony describes the dream he has every night for what will turn out to be the last month of his life, his premonition turns out to be true but in a much more complex way than he imagines in this moment. He sings “Something’s Coming” and that something is almost certainly Maria. As a former gang member who has turned his life around, Tony is ready for something big to happen to him. His association with the Jets and the Sharks will both lead him to this something and take it away from him. Without Riff’s insistence that Tony remain loyal to the Jets, Tony would never have attended the dance and met Maria. However, he also would not have been at the rumble.