Thesis Statement: Humans take for granted that free will exists, as without this assumption, they would be forced to acknowledge that they are merely puppets in a play with pre-scripted destinies.
I will then go on to explain exactly what existentialists believe in and how their decisions affect the future. Next I will relate free will, or the lack of free will to Stoppard's play (R and G). The reasons why the characters lacked free will and what it did for their future. I plan to use quotes from the essays, R an G book, and the existentialism definition sheet.
Thesis Statement: We normally think of death as the opposite of life, just as dark is the opposite of light, but this play shows us that death is simply a "man failing to reappear" and not always a tragic drama scene that we must morne over.
I will use quotations from R and G are Dead to show the casualty of the conversation of death. I will also elaborate on the explanation of death as a failure to reappear (like in the play). I will also find references to death in the text and support my claims from there.
Thesis statement: In their works, authors Tom Stoppard, William Shakespeare, and T.S. Elliot have used the idea that death is “just a man failing to reappear” (Stoppard 84) as a way of downplaying the unavoidable act of death and exaggerating the superiority that life has over death.
To support this thesis statement I will take quotes from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Hamlet, The Hollow Men, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock that show death as a simple act where someone simply fades away, is forgotten about, or disappears. I will also use quotes that compare and contrast life and death. Most of the quotes I use will convey a feeling that death isn't a big deal.
Thesis Statement: By choosing to incorporate ambiguity within their works, Stoppard, Shakespeare, and Eliot suggest that there is no predetermined purpose for life, but rather that life and death will always contain uncertainty. These works stray away from traditional narrative line and lack clear plot structure, which parallels the uncertainty in the lives of the fictional characters.
In my essay, I will use quotes from Hamlet to show how the reader is uncertain of whether or not he is actually crazy. I will also use quotes from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to show the two characters' confusion with their identities and the uncertainty associated with their death. Finally, I will use The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Hollow Men to show the necessity of creating meaning for your own life.
In Tom Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the main characters encounter a troupe of players on their way to Ellsinore to entertain the king. These are the first characters the duo encounter and the main player, and his troupe to a lesser extent, play a major role in revealing the story of Hamlet, as they did in Shakespeare’s play, and display Stoppard’s central message through their conversations about the nature of acting. By means of the troop of players and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the use of role-playing in Stoppard’s piece creates a new dimension to the play that would not exist without these interactions between the two groups. Some have proposed that the story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern could all be itself a play, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern merely actors doing their job as part of the player’s troupe. In this case, the idea of existentialism fits well. The only two certainties of life are birth and death. As the two continue onward in the play, they improvise their roles in the play until they are able to reach their end, death.
Existentialism is the idea that there is no predetermined destiny, but rather one is capable of creating and controlling their own life. The characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are examples of existentialists, and therefore seem to lack free will. This idea is proven throughout examples in the texts of Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
I will continue by giving specific examples of R and G's behavior and the continual idea that they have failed to understand the reasoning behind their actions, and why they are being sent to perform these tasks.
In the literary works of Stoppard, Eliot, and Shakespeare, the effect of pleasure and disquietude is represented through the writers lucidity in diction and structure flow.
I plan to explain this by choosing quotes (esp. from Eliot's poem) that reflect the inconsistent theme of the vagueness, that in turn show the disquietude.
The assumption is made that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (R & G) are existentialist that lack the free will that we the people seem to take for granted and their lack of free will is owed to the decisions that they make which limit them to fully understand the capacity of acting upon free will.
i will support this with how the decisions R&G are not alternative choices that they can make. I will also recognize what free will is and their "will" being undesirable ones.
In existentialism, as a person you are nothing but an actor in a play, improvising, with nothing planned for your future. Role-playing is a central metaphor in the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Rosencrantzs’ and Guildenstern’s lives are in fact a play within a play and they live as actors, simply role-playing. Their life is depicted by the Tragedians right before their eyes.
I used mostly quotes from the two essays to support the claim that role-playing is a central metaphor in the play. I also talked about the quote "Give us this day our daily mask".
In the play, the two main characters Ros and Guil, face a struggle with finding there own purpose and identities. One view is centered around that “life in a box is better than no life at all” (R&G, 71). Ros and Guil take the part that life is worth living and they can find a purpose to it.
I then use quotes from R&G Are dead, Hamlet and the existentialism paper to support evidence of how Ros and Guil are an example of this.
Thesis: Both Stoppard and Eliot use their writings to disprove the idea of existentialism. they do this through their characters in their writings. And Stoppard uses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to show that life is useless and meaningless because we all end up dead and our lives are already written for us. Eliot shows this by making his characters useless and even though they ask questions and try to find a purpose but at the end the characters in both poems end up dead.
Thesis statement: This lack of free will results in an almost blissful existence. There are no real worries due to the lack of pressure that is placed upon any decisions made, as no decisions are truly required to be made by the individuals.
In order to support this thesis i will talk about the lack of freewill that they have and their attitude towards life. Though their existence seems futile, it never appears that they are unhappy with how they are or their position in life. I will also talk about Hamlet and how he handles the issue of freewill and how it impacts his life. In both cases there is evidence to support that a lack of freewill can actually result in a more blissful and peaceful existence.
Thesis Statement: Throughout the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead death is spoken of as a “man failing to reappear”, a sense of dignity, purposeless, and directionless. Whether it is through the way Rosencrantz and Guildenstern speak of death as if it is nothing more than breathing, or how the two are completely clueless as to the fact that many want them dead, death is constantly brought up in this play.
I then went on to explain how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern prove themselves to be existentialists and their beliefs on death. I tied this in with Hamlet, The Love Song Of and Existentialism, using quotes for each.
By contrasting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s difficulty separating reality from illusion with Hamlet’s questioning of fate through the ability to choose his actions, Stoppard demonstrates that destiny is both predetermined and unavoidable.
I support this with examples of how R+G's confusion and lack of identity forces them to rely on others, how language (the games and questioning) is used to demonstrate free will, the idea of fate in regards to both plays, and how both interpret death etc. I also have quotes from the handouts and the poems.
The theme of death permeates the plays by constantly entering the thoughts of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and enabling their ability to make or not make decisions.
I am going to explain this thesis by discussing how the idea of death distracts Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and how it influenecs Hamlet on most of the decisions that he makes.
My promp is the one about life in a box being better than no life at all. Which I dissagree with. To me the box is a prison, like Denmark, and to remain in such a state is to leave your life in the hands of fate. Instead you should take the reins and take charge, you are your own master and you should never settle for a box. live to the fullest extent that you can untill you die, or die trying, because you only have one life and you're going to be dead someday anyways. If you stay in the box and let others lead you around, as Guil and Ros did, then you'll end up getting hung by some British King-type person.
The purpose of these non-traditional works was to challenge accepted values in the search for some certainty in life and the meaning of life or existence.
I will explain in the essay how the two poems and Stoppard's play emphasize the existentialist idea that suggests that life is an uncertain combination of confusing events which ultimately come to death and will not matter in the end, concluding that a person’s existence in inconsequential. I will first explain how the poems and the play differ from traditional works and then I will use quotes from the play and the essays to explain the significances of the differences.
My thesis paper basically states that I disagree with Rosencrantz when he says that life in a box is better than no life at all. Rosencrantz only thinks that life in a box is better than no life at all because he cannot imagine what death would be like, therefor he would fear it because people tend to fear what they do not understand. I used quotes from Hamlet including the one about him being bounded in a nutshell, because it is similar to being trapped in a box, and bits and pieces from "to be or not to be" because Hamlet weighs the pros and cons of "being" and decides that he would rather be alive.
Thesis: In their plays and poems the authors show us this by having so many times and parts of the poems that are one line comfortable and then next your confused as to what’s going on and it’s uncomfortable.
I'm gonna support my thesis by giving quotes from Hamlet, R&G, and also T.S. Elliot's Love song. These quotes will show the reader that there are times when the stories plot is comfortable and then it's got uneasiness to it.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead evoke a mixture of feelings left to the audience for interpretation. The authors of both these are inclined to change the emotion of their literature to keep the audience’s attention. The above is my thesis statement. My plan is to support this statment by providing examples of which there are plenty from both books and the essays. I will use the sarcastic remarks of Hamlet and R and G mixed with the tradegic endings of both plays to support the fact that the authors do alternate between a comfortable environment and an uncomfortable one to keep the audience entertained.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and the “Hollow Men,” support the existentialist idea that paralysis stems from the sense of futility. In these works, the authors have a fatalistic attitude towards life, they believe that the decisions that one makes are meaningless and do not effect the outcome.
I will go on to compare the four different writing pieces to my idea. For Hamlet I will describe how he is paralyzed and unable to act. For Rosencrant and Guildenstern I will describe how the outcome of their coin flipping game has no point.
Each character is an existentialist, and because of their philosophical view on life, they find themselves becoming paralyzed, and this paralysis stems from their feeling of loneliness, uselessness, and just the overall absurdity of life. This connection of the existentialist views causing the feelings of useless or meaningless life, causing the inability to act, is an overall theme in many modernist and post-modernist works. I basically just expanded on the idea that there is an overall theme in each of the plays, essays and poems that the character or narrator becomes paralyzed because they feel like they're living a useless life, which is caused by their existentialist outlook on life. I used quotes from hamlet when he couldn't act and kill Claudius, and how R&G couldn't make a decision, and didn't know what or where they were going or what they were meant for.
In the play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, Stoppard challenges notions of traditional theatre, value, and storytelling to give the play a feeling of existentialism and the idea of living in the moment with the two characters. It is an impression or “moment to moment progression” with the dialogue. (R&G Essay p. 39) This progression also has ties to the overall feel Stoppard wished to give the play.
I will then go on to explain what type of things Stoppard did to make the play feel moment to moment and what that then meens for the audience. I will also explain how all of those deiails make do not let the play have a pre-destined ending so it has an existentalist feeling.
Life is made up of people putting on many different acts as a way making meaning to their lives. In the two plays Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead it is demonstrated what happens when people lose their sense of why they live and can no longer find a good reason to live.
I plan to talk about how these two plays demonstrate how when people get upset or down on life they begin to lose the ability to act or better yet feel like living is not worth it.
Thesis Statement: Throughout the book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard the theme of role-playing in drama is used as a central metaphor for existentialism and reveals that you choose the persona, role or character of the type of person you want to be percieved to be.
I developed this thesis by comparing the characteristics of an actor with those of a regular person as well as incorporating information from other text's by authors such as Shakespeare and T.S Eliot. On top of that I explained the theory of existentialism and how it is explicilty portrayed through R&G.
In the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard the two main characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern don’t lack free will in the literal sense of the phrase but in the reality of the situation there is an overriding force dictating their actions.
In my paper i expand on the thought that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have free will in every situation and show how their free will gets over ridden by external forces
When the box is cannot be escaped it is still preferable to no life.
This thesis didn't work out too well, since it agreed with the prompt. I went on to explain how life in boxes could turn out using quotes from Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
In the works of Eliot, Shakespeare and Stoppard we see the facade that many characters seem to embrace. The facade that these characters present are a direct result of the uncertainty that depicts each of their lives.
I will use quotes from each of the 3 texts and explain in detail the characters and how/why they wish to put up a facade. Also, I will explain why this is necessary in understanding the play as a whole and what real applications it has.
Oh boy, when I first read the questions it appeared that mine was one of the easiest of the bunch to answer, but as it turns out it was still fairly difficult to construct a good answer form scattered quotes,my thesis is:
The way that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to lack free will is intentional in that the author is using this to mock the passivity of R and G in adhering to the roles set forth to them by Shakespeare’s script, this passivity eventually leads to their deaths.
This seemed to be the best thesis I could come up with as well...there were so many reasons as to why it would appear they had no free will, some other reasons could include : "just because" "just because the author wanted it that way", "they're fictional characters set in a never-changing set script", and "they're fictional characters and it doesn't really matter", I chose to defend this by picking out quotes from the script that showed their intense constant confusion they displayed upon every change in the plot of the script
Life is full choices for people to make but ultimately, as an existentialist would believe, we all end up in the same place, dead, eventually dust, and forgotten. Existentialism is described as feeling hopeless and purposeless in life. Many authors have written about this idea including the authors of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock, in all of which characters have found an inability to act due to the realization of this bleak future. I will go into how characters are used in each story to illustrate how each character is unable to act.
. This feeling develops when a person has no control over a situation, no matter how hard they try to grasp it, and are forced to participate in the events that follow simply because it feels like their destiny has already been determined. It is a cause and effect phenomenon, stemming from a sense of futility, which haunts our clueless characters to the brink of death and then back again.
I intend to explain this thesis much further and then introduce an argument against the importance of paralysis but explain why it occures in our characters and how we are differnt than characters in a book.
In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Stoppard uses a mold that contains predestination when outlining what Rosencrrantz and Guildenstern will do while retaining a small bit of free will which relates to existentialism in that each action changes future actions. When we read R + G, we already know how it will end (because of Hamlet) but we don’t know what happens in between (which is up to R + G to decide).
The way I developed this thesis is I provided quotes on both sides of the spectrum (predestination and free will)which were primarily from philosphical conversations between R + G and the player as well as the presence of the Hamlet scenes which we already know will take place. I also related this to existentialism by using quotes from the handout.
Stoppard rallies against traditional ideas in his play-writes to show a different meaning to life than traditional existentialism. He doesn’t use a set plot like most play writers. These traditional values are also skewed in Elliot’s poems, as he uses different rhyming schemes and goes against the norm.
I based my essay off of these ideas, integrating quotes from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the two plays we read in class.
In the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, the title characters have little free will, which shows the perceived insignificance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s actions in their own lives and the futility of making important decisions when they will not affect the direction of your life.
I plan to show that Stoppard was making a statement about free will which questions whether such a thing exists when the ending of your life has already been determined. I plan on using quotes from R and G, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and the second essay to bolster my thoughts on the implementation and nature of free will in the play.
Throughout Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock there’s a constant and sinuous debate on whether life is worth living in the unexpected, or rather living in a secured area based off personal decisions and choices.
I will continue to go to explain by using examples from the text whether its better to live in the moment along with not knowing what is going to happen next, or by protecting yourself in an area and living your life within that.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and the “Hollow Men,” paralysis stemming from a sense of futility is a theme. This existentialist view on life is discussed throughout all of these works.
I will then go on to use quotes from all the sources and compare them in an existentialist view using paralysis and futility.
In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard plays around with existentialist’s concept by incorporating death into the dialogue and the plot. Similarily, William Shakespeare has developed metaphors relaying similar messages about death in his classic novella Hamlet. Both Tom Stoppard and William Shakespeares’ works are saturated with text based on the theory that absolutely nothing follows death. To support this thesis I will then use the quote that inferes than 'man is the quintessence of dust' and use that to explain the existentialist belief that there is nothing after death, you are no more than dust. I will also use several quotes from R & G Are Dead. And I am using the green sheet to define existentialism in a more detailed manner.
Existentialism is the idea that there is no predetermined path and that there is no certain things in life other than being born and dying. The main idea is that everyone is capable of making choices which in turn shape our future lives. We haven’t a clue how the choices will change our future, but they effect our future none the less. In Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the two main characters wander through their lives thinking that they have no way of choosing their actions.
Almost all of my quotes came from R and G are dead. The main points that I used repeatedly returned to the role play that the two characters use to prepare themselves for speaking to Hamlet, the king of England and a few others. They where in a sense trying to shape their future but end up failing miserably every time.
Thesis Statement incorporating in my Introduction Paragraph: What is death? How does it feel to be dead—How do we know that this is death? According to Google’s definition of death, death is the departure from life. It is “the permanent end of all life functions,” “the absence of life,” like the final stage in life. However, how do we know that this is the final stage to life? Could there be a life after death, and the process of coming back to life after death in the form of reincarnation? In addition, death is like a remedy that helps release pain and or the burden of life, and it can be acted out, but there is a difference between a real death and a fake death. In the fake death, “you will come back in a different hat,” but in the real one, “no one gets up after death” (R & G Essay 46).
I will write about how death cannot be acted out, but in the theaterical illusion, death could be acted out in a sense that "you will come back in a different hat. But no one gets up after death--there is no applause--there is only silence" in the reality(Ros. & Guild. Essay). I will also write about how we could not measure death and the same for freedom, however, both are determined by the choices we made, which say a little about existentialism, since existentislist belived that life has no meaning. However, if death is "just a man failing to reappear,” and that life is simply meaningless, death should be the same.
Tom Stoppard and William Shakespeare, through their play’s of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and Hamlet, suggest that life in a box is better than no life at all by Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s decision to continue striving for a goal, and by such living, rather than giving up.
I plan to explain how each character comes to the conclusion that life in a box is better than no life and show how the author of each text uses what's going on in the characters surrounding to show that the character made the "correct" decision. Than I will use further quotations from the book to show that it was each author's intention to portray life in a box as being better than being dead. I will also compare the metaphors of a "box" that is used by each author.
Thesis: R & G is a book about trying to make decisions and never really making any.
I will explain how the book is all about how they are both paralyzed in their decision and action making. I will also talk about how their paralysis stems from their weakness. I plan to use situations from the book to explain my thesis.
Thesis Statement: Throughout Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard uses the metaphor of a play to represent the existentialist view of life and death.
I will go on to talk about how death permeates the play as well as how the metaphor that R & G give, relating life/death to a play, is a great way to define existentialism. I used the two poems to prove points as well as parts of R&G are dead.
47 comments:
Thesis Statement:
Humans take for granted that free will exists, as without this assumption, they would be forced to acknowledge that they are merely puppets in a play with pre-scripted destinies.
I will then go on to explain exactly what existentialists believe in and how their decisions affect the future. Next I will relate free will, or the lack of free will to Stoppard's play (R and G). The reasons why the characters lacked free will and what it did for their future. I plan to use quotes from the essays, R an G book, and the existentialism definition sheet.
Thesis Statement:
We normally think of death as the opposite of life, just as dark is the opposite of light, but this play shows us that death is simply a "man failing to reappear" and not always a tragic drama scene that we must morne over.
I will use quotations from R and G are Dead to show the casualty of the conversation of death. I will also elaborate on the explanation of death as a failure to reappear (like in the play). I will also find references to death in the text and support my claims from there.
Thesis statement:
In their works, authors Tom Stoppard, William Shakespeare, and T.S. Elliot have used the idea that death is “just a man failing to reappear” (Stoppard 84) as a way of downplaying the unavoidable act of death and exaggerating the superiority that life has over death.
To support this thesis statement I will take quotes from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Hamlet, The Hollow Men, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock that show death as a simple act where someone simply fades away, is forgotten about, or disappears. I will also use quotes that compare and contrast life and death. Most of the quotes I use will convey a feeling that death isn't a big deal.
Thesis Statement:
By choosing to incorporate ambiguity within their works, Stoppard, Shakespeare, and Eliot suggest that there is no predetermined purpose for life, but rather that life and death will always contain uncertainty. These works stray away from traditional narrative line and lack clear plot structure, which parallels the uncertainty in the lives of the fictional characters.
In my essay, I will use quotes from Hamlet to show how the reader is uncertain of whether or not he is actually crazy. I will also use quotes from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to show the two characters' confusion with their identities and the uncertainty associated with their death. Finally, I will use The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Hollow Men to show the necessity of creating meaning for your own life.
In Tom Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the main characters encounter a troupe of players on their way to Ellsinore to entertain the king. These are the first characters the duo encounter and the main player, and his troupe to a lesser extent, play a major role in revealing the story of Hamlet, as they did in Shakespeare’s play, and display Stoppard’s central message through their conversations about the nature of acting. By means of the troop of players and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the use of role-playing in Stoppard’s piece creates a new dimension to the play that would not exist without these interactions between the two groups. Some have proposed that the story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern could all be itself a play, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern merely actors doing their job as part of the player’s troupe. In this case, the idea of existentialism fits well. The only two certainties of life are birth and death. As the two continue onward in the play, they improvise their roles in the play until they are able to reach their end, death.
Existentialism is the idea that there is no predetermined destiny, but rather one is capable of creating and controlling their own life. The characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are examples of existentialists, and therefore seem to lack free will. This idea is proven throughout examples in the texts of Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
I will continue by giving specific examples of R and G's behavior and the continual idea that they have failed to understand the reasoning behind their actions, and why they are being sent to perform these tasks.
In the literary works of Stoppard, Eliot, and Shakespeare, the effect of pleasure and disquietude is represented through the writers lucidity in diction and structure flow.
I plan to explain this by choosing quotes (esp. from Eliot's poem) that reflect the inconsistent theme of the vagueness, that in turn show the disquietude.
The assumption is made that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (R & G) are existentialist that lack the free will that we the people seem to take for granted and their lack of free will is owed to the decisions that they make which limit them to fully understand the capacity of acting upon free will.
i will support this with how the decisions R&G are not alternative choices that they can make. I will also recognize what free will is and their "will" being undesirable ones.
In existentialism, as a person you are nothing but an actor in a play, improvising, with nothing planned for your future. Role-playing is a central metaphor in the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Rosencrantzs’ and Guildenstern’s lives are in fact a play within a play and they live as actors, simply role-playing. Their life is depicted by the Tragedians right before their eyes.
I used mostly quotes from the two essays to support the claim that role-playing is a central metaphor in the play. I also talked about the quote "Give us this day our daily mask".
In the play, the two main characters Ros and Guil, face a struggle with finding there own purpose and identities. One view is centered around that “life in a box is better than no life at all” (R&G, 71). Ros and Guil take the part that life is worth living and they can find a purpose to it.
I then use quotes from R&G Are dead, Hamlet and the existentialism paper to support evidence of how Ros and Guil are an example of this.
Thesis:
Both Stoppard and Eliot use their writings to disprove the idea of existentialism.
they do this through their characters in their writings. And Stoppard uses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to show that life is useless and meaningless because we all end up dead and our lives are already written for us. Eliot shows this by making his characters useless and even though they ask questions and try to find a purpose but at the end the characters in both poems end up dead.
Thesis statement:
This lack of free will results in an almost blissful existence. There are no real worries due to the lack of pressure that is placed upon any decisions made, as no decisions are truly required to be made by the individuals.
In order to support this thesis i will talk about the lack of freewill that they have and their attitude towards life. Though their existence seems futile, it never appears that they are unhappy with how they are or their position in life. I will also talk about Hamlet and how he handles the issue of freewill and how it impacts his life. In both cases there is evidence to support that a lack of freewill can actually result in a more blissful and peaceful existence.
Thesis Statement:
Throughout the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead death is spoken of as a “man failing to reappear”, a sense of dignity, purposeless, and directionless. Whether it is through the way Rosencrantz and Guildenstern speak of death as if it is nothing more than breathing, or how the two are completely clueless as to the fact that many want them dead, death is constantly brought up in this play.
I then went on to explain how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern prove themselves to be existentialists and their beliefs on death. I tied this in with Hamlet, The Love Song Of and Existentialism, using quotes for each.
By contrasting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s difficulty separating reality from illusion with Hamlet’s questioning of fate through the ability to choose his actions, Stoppard demonstrates that destiny is both predetermined and unavoidable.
I support this with examples of how R+G's confusion and lack of identity forces them to rely on others, how language (the games and questioning) is used to demonstrate free will, the idea of fate in regards to both plays, and how both interpret death etc. I also have quotes from the handouts and the poems.
The theme of death permeates the plays by constantly entering the thoughts of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and enabling their ability to make or not make decisions.
I am going to explain this thesis by discussing how the idea of death distracts Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and how it influenecs Hamlet on most of the decisions that he makes.
My promp is the one about life in a box being better than no life at all. Which I dissagree with. To me the box is a prison, like Denmark, and to remain in such a state is to leave your life in the hands of fate. Instead you should take the reins and take charge, you are your own master and you should never settle for a box. live to the fullest extent that you can untill you die, or die trying, because you only have one life and you're going to be dead someday anyways. If you stay in the box and let others lead you around, as Guil and Ros did, then you'll end up getting hung by some British King-type person.
The purpose of these non-traditional works was to challenge accepted values in the search for some certainty in life and the meaning of life or existence.
I will explain in the essay how the two poems and Stoppard's play emphasize the existentialist idea that suggests that life is an uncertain combination of confusing events which ultimately come to death and will not matter in the end, concluding that a person’s existence in inconsequential. I will first explain how the poems and the play differ from traditional works and then I will use quotes from the play and the essays to explain the significances of the differences.
My thesis paper basically states that I disagree with Rosencrantz when he says that life in a box is better than no life at all. Rosencrantz only thinks that life in a box is better than no life at all because he cannot imagine what death would be like, therefor he would fear it because people tend to fear what they do not understand. I used quotes from Hamlet including the one about him being bounded in a nutshell, because it is similar to being trapped in a box, and bits and pieces from "to be or not to be" because Hamlet weighs the pros and cons of "being" and decides that he would rather be alive.
Thesis: In their plays and poems the authors show us this by having so many times and parts of the poems that are one line comfortable and then next your confused as to what’s going on and it’s uncomfortable.
I'm gonna support my thesis by giving quotes from Hamlet, R&G, and also T.S. Elliot's Love song. These quotes will show the reader that there are times when the stories plot is comfortable and then it's got uneasiness to it.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead evoke a mixture of feelings left to the audience for interpretation. The authors of both these are inclined to change the emotion of their literature to keep the audience’s attention. The above is my thesis statement. My plan is to support this statment by providing examples of which there are plenty from both books and the essays. I will use the sarcastic remarks of Hamlet and R and G mixed with the tradegic endings of both plays to support the fact that the authors do alternate between a comfortable environment and an uncomfortable one to keep the audience entertained.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and the “Hollow Men,” support the existentialist idea that paralysis stems from the sense of futility. In these works, the authors have a fatalistic attitude towards life, they believe that the decisions that one makes are meaningless and do not effect the outcome.
I will go on to compare the four different writing pieces to my idea. For Hamlet I will describe how he is paralyzed and unable to act. For Rosencrant and Guildenstern I will describe how the outcome of their coin flipping game has no point.
Each character is an existentialist, and because of their philosophical view on life, they find themselves becoming paralyzed, and this paralysis stems from their feeling of loneliness, uselessness, and just the overall absurdity of life. This connection of the existentialist views causing the feelings of useless or meaningless life, causing the inability to act, is an overall theme in many modernist and post-modernist works.
I basically just expanded on the idea that there is an overall theme in each of the plays, essays and poems that the character or narrator becomes paralyzed because they feel like they're living a useless life, which is caused by their existentialist outlook on life. I used quotes from hamlet when he couldn't act and kill Claudius, and how R&G couldn't make a decision, and didn't know what or where they were going or what they were meant for.
In the play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, Stoppard challenges notions of traditional theatre, value, and storytelling to give the play a feeling of existentialism and the idea of living in the moment with the two characters. It is an impression or “moment to moment progression” with the dialogue. (R&G Essay p. 39) This progression also has ties to the overall feel Stoppard wished to give the play.
I will then go on to explain what type of things Stoppard did to make the play feel moment to moment and what that then meens for the audience. I will also explain how all of those deiails make do not let the play have a pre-destined ending so it has an existentalist feeling.
Life is made up of people putting on many different acts as a way making meaning to their lives. In the two plays Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead it is demonstrated what happens when people lose their sense of why they live and can no longer find a good reason to live.
I plan to talk about how these two plays demonstrate how when people get upset or down on life they begin to lose the ability to act or better yet feel like living is not worth it.
Thesis Statement:
Throughout the book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard the theme of role-playing in drama is used as a central metaphor for existentialism and reveals that you choose the persona, role or character of the type of person you want to be percieved to be.
I developed this thesis by comparing the characteristics of an actor with those of a regular person as well as incorporating information from other text's by authors such as Shakespeare and T.S Eliot. On top of that I explained the theory of existentialism and how it is explicilty portrayed through R&G.
In the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard the two main characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern don’t lack free will in the literal sense of the phrase but in the reality of the situation there is an overriding force dictating their actions.
In my paper i expand on the thought that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have free will in every situation and show how their free will gets over ridden by external forces
When the box is cannot be escaped it is still preferable to no life.
This thesis didn't work out too well, since it agreed with the prompt. I went on to explain how life in boxes could turn out using quotes from Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
In the works of Eliot, Shakespeare and Stoppard we see the facade that many characters seem to embrace. The facade that these characters present are a direct result of the uncertainty that depicts each of their lives.
I will use quotes from each of the 3 texts and explain in detail the characters and how/why they wish to put up a facade. Also, I will explain why this is necessary in understanding the play as a whole and what real applications it has.
Oh boy, when I first read the questions it appeared that mine was one of the easiest of the bunch to answer, but as it turns out it was still fairly difficult to construct a good answer form scattered quotes,my thesis is:
The way that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to lack free will is intentional in that the author is using this to mock the passivity of R and G in adhering to the roles set forth to them by Shakespeare’s script, this passivity eventually leads to their deaths.
This seemed to be the best thesis I could come up with as well...there were so many reasons as to why it would appear they had no free will, some other reasons could include : "just because" "just because the author wanted it that way", "they're fictional characters set in a never-changing set script", and "they're fictional characters and it doesn't really matter", I chose to defend this by picking out quotes from the script that showed their intense constant confusion they displayed upon every change in the plot of the script
Life is full choices for people to make but ultimately, as an existentialist would believe, we all end up in the same place, dead, eventually dust, and forgotten. Existentialism is described as feeling hopeless and purposeless in life. Many authors have written about this idea including the authors of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock, in all of which characters have found an inability to act due to the realization of this bleak future.
I will go into how characters are used in each story to illustrate how each character is unable to act.
. This feeling develops when a person has no control over a situation, no matter how hard they try to grasp it, and are forced to participate in the events that follow simply because it feels like their destiny has already been determined. It is a cause and effect phenomenon, stemming from a sense of futility, which haunts our clueless characters to the brink of death and then back again.
I intend to explain this thesis much further and then introduce an argument against the importance of paralysis but explain why it occures in our characters and how we are differnt than characters in a book.
In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Stoppard uses a mold that contains predestination when outlining what Rosencrrantz and Guildenstern will do while retaining a small bit of free will which relates to existentialism in that each action changes future actions. When we read R + G, we already know how it will end (because of Hamlet) but we don’t know what happens in between (which is up to R + G to decide).
The way I developed this thesis is I provided quotes on both sides of the spectrum (predestination and free will)which were primarily from philosphical conversations between R + G and the player as well as the presence of the Hamlet scenes which we already know will take place. I also related this to existentialism by using quotes from the handout.
Stoppard rallies against traditional ideas in his play-writes to show a different meaning to life than traditional existentialism. He doesn’t use a set plot like most play writers. These traditional values are also skewed in Elliot’s poems, as he uses different rhyming schemes and goes against the norm.
I based my essay off of these ideas, integrating quotes from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the two plays we read in class.
In the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, the title characters have little free will, which shows the perceived insignificance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s actions in their own lives and the futility of making important decisions when they will not affect the direction of your life.
I plan to show that Stoppard was making a statement about free will which questions whether such a thing exists when the ending of your life has already been determined. I plan on using quotes from R and G, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and the second essay to bolster my thoughts on the implementation and nature of free will in the play.
Thesis Statement:
Throughout Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock there’s a constant and sinuous debate on whether life is worth living in the unexpected, or rather living in a secured area based off personal decisions and choices.
I will continue to go to explain by using examples from the text whether its better to live in the moment along with not knowing what is going to happen next, or by protecting yourself in an area and living your life within that.
In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the two main characters, choose life in a box over no life at all.
I plan to devolop it by deciding what life in a box means, and then show how they fit into the "life in a box" catagory.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and the “Hollow Men,” paralysis stemming from a sense of futility is a theme. This existentialist view on life is discussed throughout all of these works.
I will then go on to use quotes from all the sources and compare them in an existentialist view using paralysis and futility.
In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard plays around with existentialist’s concept by incorporating death into the dialogue and the plot. Similarily, William Shakespeare has developed metaphors relaying similar messages about death in his classic novella Hamlet. Both Tom Stoppard and William Shakespeares’ works are saturated with text based on the theory that absolutely nothing follows death.
To support this thesis I will then use the quote that inferes than 'man is the quintessence of dust' and use that to explain the existentialist belief that there is nothing after death, you are no more than dust. I will also use several quotes from R & G Are Dead. And I am using the green sheet to define existentialism in a more detailed manner.
Molly Riegel
Existentialism is the idea that there is no predetermined path and that there is no certain things in life other than being born and dying. The main idea is that everyone is capable of making choices which in turn shape our future lives. We haven’t a clue how the choices will change our future, but they effect our future none the less. In Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the two main characters wander through their lives thinking that they have no way of choosing their actions.
Almost all of my quotes came from R and G are dead. The main points that I used repeatedly returned to the role play that the two characters use to prepare themselves for speaking to Hamlet, the king of England and a few others. They where in a sense trying to shape their future but end up failing miserably every time.
Thesis Statement incorporating in my Introduction Paragraph:
What is death? How does it feel to be dead—How do we know that this is death? According to Google’s definition of death, death is the departure from life. It is “the permanent end of all life functions,” “the absence of life,” like the final stage in life. However, how do we know that this is the final stage to life? Could there be a life after death, and the process of coming back to life after death in the form of reincarnation? In addition, death is like a remedy that helps release pain and or the burden of life, and it can be acted out, but there is a difference between a real death and a fake death. In the fake death, “you will come back in a different hat,” but in the real one, “no one gets up after death” (R & G Essay 46).
I will write about how death cannot be acted out, but in the theaterical illusion, death could be acted out in a sense that "you will come back in a different hat. But no one gets up after death--there is no applause--there is only silence" in the reality(Ros. & Guild. Essay). I will also write about how we could not measure death and the same for freedom, however, both are determined by the choices we made, which say a little about existentialism, since existentislist belived that life has no meaning. However, if death is "just a man failing to reappear,” and that life is simply meaningless, death should be the same.
~~Mea Pen~~
Tom Stoppard and William Shakespeare, through their play’s of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and Hamlet, suggest that life in a box is better than no life at all by Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s decision to continue striving for a goal, and by such living, rather than giving up.
I plan to explain how each character comes to the conclusion that life in a box is better than no life and show how the author of each text uses what's going on in the characters surrounding to show that the character made the "correct" decision. Than I will use further quotations from the book to show that it was each author's intention to portray life in a box as being better than being dead. I will also compare the metaphors of a "box" that is used by each author.
Death is thought of as the end of ones life but in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern death is a "man failing to reappear".
I will find quotes about death from each of the sources and use them to show how the theme of death developes in R and G
Thesis: R & G is a book about trying to make decisions and never really making any.
I will explain how the book is all about how they are both paralyzed in their decision and action making. I will also talk about how their paralysis stems from their weakness. I plan to use situations from the book to explain my thesis.
Thesis Statement:
Throughout Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard uses the metaphor of a play to represent the existentialist view of life and death.
I will go on to talk about how death permeates the play as well as how the metaphor that R & G give, relating life/death to a play, is a great way to define existentialism. I used the two poems to prove points as well as parts of R&G are dead.
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