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- include a quotation
- include your ideas about it
- include stunningly intriguing questions for your classmates to consider
You may also respond to posts for extra credit.
For each posting (comment/response), you can receive 10 points of extra credit. The most extra credit you may receive is 30 points (as in 30/30 on an extra grade). Feel free to post more than three times, though, because this could be very cool.
Remember the posting rules, please: no full names, and be nice to each other.
19 comments:
As I was reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead I thought it was clearly a deconstructionist piece of work. It focused on two minor characters in the play Hamlet and showed more in depth what they were up to, but when I reached this quote I was no longer sure.
"Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over...death is no anything...death is not...It's the absence of presence, nothing more...the endless time of never coming back...a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound...." (pg 124 in the black book)
I though this was a very existentialist quote because it sounds so hopeless and makes death sound so final and meaningless because it "is not anything" I wanted to hear what everyone else thought of that and whether or not they agreed or disagreed with me. Is this book existentialist, deconstructionist, or a mix? At the moment I am leaning towards existentialist because of this quote and other similar ones near the end of the book. Post away! :-)
I'm only partway through R&G and still having issues with exactly what deconstruction actually is . So, it's 11 o'clock and I'm not tired, so, I decided to find some sort of definition. Unfortunately, what I got from Wikipedia didn't seem all that helpful because this is what I got:
"The act of definition, in this view, is an attempt to "finish" or "complete" deconstruction, yet deconstruction is never viewed as complete."
I found this interesting in relation to Waiting For Godot because the play ended with Vladimir and Estragon still waiting for Godot and it didn't seem complete to me. There was no ending where something actually happened, nothing with substance anyway. And as far as I've gotten in R&G, the same has happened. They've talked about how fast fingernails and toenails grow, flipped numerous amounts of coins, spoken with some tragedians, and Guildenstern has gone on long rants about the scientific phenomena of probability which Rosencrantz has pretty much ignored.
Right, so now that I've thought about it, and found some relative things in the play, Wiki did end up helping me a bit. I still don't think I've quite got a good handle on it yet so if anyone has anything better to give me, that'd be wicked sweet.
I'd also like to ask everyone who is reading this what they make of this quote:
Guil: A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear....(that whole quote about seeing the unicorn/horse with an arrow in its head).
Ros. seems not to be listening to this at all and I'm not quite sure if it fits into the deconstruction idea (since I'm still not sure what it is.)
Right, forgot to say that quote of mine is on pg. 21 in the Bookworm copy.
In response to Rachael's post, I am almost completly in agreement. As I got toward the end of the book the same scene she quoted stuck me as rather exictentialist, however I felt that most of the play was desconsturctionist.
In response to Hilary, in the end of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead I felt a similiar frustration to that at the end of Waiting for Godot. I felt like the thing I was waiting for throughout the entire story never actaully happened. I was hoping the scene of their death would actually happen, but instead the story skips right over it, as if the death itself was not actually existentialist. I don't know if that is exactly what existentialism is all about (maybe someone else can comment on that)...
A distinctive difference I found between the two stories is how in Waiting for Godot they always say they are leaving and never actually do leave. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead they actually go when they say they will. (See stage direction on page 95, which is the last page of Act II) This seems to me to be in important difference separating the two works. To me this seems to be one of the factors making Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead more deconstructionist. So to me is seems that the book could be either because I feel like there are strong agruments supporting either side. It might be interesting to pick a side and debate it...
Unfortunately I must disagree with Jordan saying that in R&G they actually leave when they say they will. On pg. 87 they spend some time walking back and forth across the stage, trying to decide which direction each should go in, and whether or not they should go alone. They then realize that he may come to where they are after they have gone. At the end of that section they end up in their original positions.
I was really interested in the class discussion on Friday about the significance of the coins. I read these quotes from Guildenstern and thought they fit nicely:
"You did, the trouble is, each of them is...plausible, without being instinctive. All your life you live so close to the truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque."
"The only beginning is birth and the only end is death- if you can't count on that, what can you count on?"
I think that one of the themes the coin flipping scenes help to establish in the play is that nothing in life is certain- even simple things such as laws of probability, which people on a whole accept as truth, but there is no way of telling if it is absolutely certain. The Player continues this when he's talking about the different types of acting his group performs.
"They're hardly divisible, sir- well, I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, but I can't do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsary-they're all blood, you see."
This quote not only affirm's Guildensterns belief that only death is final, but more importantly supports Racheal's view of the play as an existentialist work. It seems like he's saying that life (rhetoric and love) are meaningless, becuase they all end in the same way- death.
Just a quick response to Hilary's post (and Jordan's), I think that R&G do actually go somewhere, becuase they have an end. However, the fact that they only ever do anything when they are told to is very similar to Vladimir and Estragon, becuase neither couple chooses to make use of their free will. On pg 95, R&G are debating whether to leave the situation or not. Ultimately, I dont think they decide to stay as much as they don't make any choice and allow life to happen.
Okay, by never I mean rarely. It is a similiarty I merely was pointing out that the pairs of characters are indecisive in their respective both plays.
In response to Erica- another quote to support the point in the end of her first post also by Guildenstern.
"I'm talking about death--and you've never expiereinced that. And you cannot act it. You die a thousand deaths--with none of that intensity which squeezea out life...and no blood runs cold anywhere. Because even as you die you know that you will come back in a different hat. But no one gets up after death-- there is no applause--there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that's--death----(page 123)
He is examining death as the absolute final stage of life, not believing that death can at all be toyed with, and that you live life, and then you die, no second chances, no acting it out. However the players do show him how it can be acted.
The mention of different hats in this quote reminds me of Waiting for Godot in the way that Vladimir(I think) takes Lucky's hat and puts it on and there is a three way trade with hats.. I am wondering if anyone has any idea about the significance of this...
I'm not sure about the hats thing, but I was wicked confused by the biblical references in the play (when Guildenstern says "Give us this day our daily...") I know that in the bible, the actual verse is "Give us this day our daily bread", but I'm not sure if Guildenstern is referring to the kinds of things that are nessecary to live life on earth. By that assumption, the words mask, cue and tune would fit, but the word week doesn't make any sense at all. Any ideas?
In response to what Erica said, I am wondering if maybe this is Rosencrantz's method of praying and asking for salvation. He is a rather submissive character, and with these offhand comments it seems he may be relatively worried about either his death, and/or what will become of him after. Maybe in substituting the word bread with other words he is in his own way trying to find the "right" thing to say and the "right" way to pray.
After reading RGAD and listening to the class discussions, I think that the play is both deconstructionist and existentialist. I believe that it is more existentialist than deconstructionist but can see an arguement either way. I did some research to find more information about both possibilities and found this website that discusses Stoppard and Beckett's focus on existentialism in each of the plays. Looking at Beckett's play in comparison to RGAD helped me in picking up on the existentialist themes present in both play.s In regards to Waiting for Godot, the website says
"When the play first opened, it was criticized for lacking meaning, structure, and common sense. These critics, however, failed to see that Beckett chose to have his play, Waiting for Godot, capture the feeling that the world has no apparent meaning."www.fcps.edu
I too felt that the play was boring in the sense that nothing happened and the characters were just Waiting for Godot. After discussing the book and reading RGAD, I have a greater appreciation for the play. It is no accident that Vladimir and Estragon are just wating around. Beckett expresses the existentialist idea on meaninglessness of time through Vladimir and Estragon.
In comparison to RGAD, I also see this meaninglessness of time with the coin flipping. This also ties into the idea that the time spent alive and living on earth is meaningless and it is the way which one dies that matters most. I was wondering if anyone else found this parallel between the two books.
After eading R&G and listening to the discussions, I'm still not sure about the idea of the play being deconstructive, I think that we, as a class, might be trying to read into the play as whole a little too much. The ideas on existentialism seem to make more sense to me, I don't know if it is because it is easier to see and find the extistentialist points in the play or what. I think to say that Stoppard's intentions were to deconstruct Shakespeares "Hamlet" is a little too far fetched, it just doesn't sit well with me. Yes the evidence shown by other classmates as well as the teachers supporting this idea are good, but I think that Stoppard wrote the play with the thought of taking minor characters/actors out of "Hamlet," and mgnifying their importance, and showing them as existentialist characters with no real intentions of deconstructing the play. If anyone can possibly enlighten me, or broaden my horizens on the topic of deconstruction for this play it would be greatly apprictiated. :):)
I agree with Spencer, that we as a class are trying too had to make this play a deconstruction of R&G in Hamlet. As I read the play I too thought that it could be a mix of existentialism and a deconstruction. However, at the end of the book two things hit me. One was that reading RGAD didn't really enhance or clarify R&G roles in Hamlet. The other was a quote on page 125; "All right, then. I don't care. I've had enough. To tell you the truth, I'm relieved." All throughout the book there are quotes like this that demoralize the reader and show that death is the only truth in life.
I think that deconstructionism is a really weird topic to think about. I mean the fact that there is this one author who wrote a book about something and then someone else can come along and expand on their ideas is pretty neat. Yah for recycling ideas! But the one problem is that some of Shakespeare's lines from "Hamlet" are in "R&GAD" and it seems like plagiarism. But, I think that Shakespeare's work might be able to be used by anyone, but I don't know. If I was an author I would be pretty mad if I wrote this great play/book and then on of my competitors/fellow authors came along and took some of my work. In the beginning of the play, it does say “No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means”, but even if they expanded on one of my characters there would still be a little bit of a bitter feeling between me and the other author. I don’t know. That is just me feeling.
That said, I really enjoyed “R&GAD”, but not as much as “Waiting for Godot”. Even though “R&GAD” went somewhere, “Waiting for Godot” had the humor and pointlessness that I greatly enjoyed. I guess one reason that I didn’t enjoy “R&GAD” as much, is that I knew the ending. I had read “Hamlet” so I knew that they were going to die. “Waiting for Godot” took me by complete surprise and left me wanting more. Now that I think of it, it is the books that have a shocking, thought-provoking end that really stick in my mind. They leave me thinking about them for a while and I don’t just say, “Well that was nice, on to the next book”. I hope that there are more books that I can find that leave me thinking and not totally frustrated with the ending.
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary said that deconstructionist means the analytic examination of something (as a theory) often in order to reveal its inadequacy. That being said, I disagree with Spencer and Tim, and have to say that “R&GAD” IS a deconstructionist play. It uses Rosen and Guild to not only explain some parts of “Hamlet” from other points of view, but also to show how different humans can be. In “Hamlet”, Hamlet has to do a lot of thinking before he can finally get up the nerve to act. And the one time that he acts without thinking, things turn out for the worst (Polonius’s death). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern don’t really think about anything, and thus they never actually DO anything. They are not passionate about something enough to get up and change it. This play shows that Hamlet’s manner of thinking so hard, that he hardly ever gets anything done, is inadequate and almost the same as if you never think and never do anything.
While reading R&G are Dead I got confused when Hamlet swotched the letter after R&G had already read it. I do not understand why thay didn't realize that the second was not in fact the one that they had already read but an entirely different one with an unbroken seal. Why don't they notice that Hamlet switches the letter on them and why does Hamlet do it in the first place if R&G are supposed to be his friends???
Now that we have completed R. and G. are Dead I have a better understanding of Hamlet. I know our paper is due next friday, but I am still pondering if it is a deconstructionist or existentialist peice. I can't seem to make up my mind. During one part I am thinking one...and the next I am swaying towards the other. But I do know that I love this quote:
No, no, no...Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being." (pg.108)
I really like this quote because I think it sums up the book. Through all of R. and G. are Dead they are contemplating the meaning of life and this quote says that death is the "ultimate negative"...not life.
I would really like to hear what my classmates think about this quote...so comment soon!
In response to what jordan and hilary said I also felt like I was left hanging at the end of R. and G. are Dead. When we were reading Hamlet we were wondering if R. and G. died at the end, so when I was actually reading R. and G. are Dead I thought it would all be summed up and tell us if they were actually killed, but instead it left me with more questions...How did they actually get killed?...Did they bring the letter to the King of England and order their own deaths?...or maybe the players took them there.
I agree with what erica said about her quote..."The only beginning is birth and the only end is death- if you can't count on that, what can you count on?" I also believe that Stoppard included the coin-flipping to show that nothing is certain and anything can happen...even a coin landing on heads every time. I think that he wants to let the reader know that life is unpredictable and we just have to take it as it goes.
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