"Dying is not romantic, and death is not a fame which will soon be over.. Death is not anything...death is not...It's the absense 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..." (Stoppard 124).
Death is commonly portrayed as a dramatic and romantic event in most classical plays, however Tom Stoppard deviates from this standard in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The main characters in this play often analyze death in a simplistic fashion; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not sophisticated thinkers or intellectual in any sense, therefore they provide the common man's perspective on the subject. They view death merely as a stage of life that everyone experiences eventually. It is not something to be mourned, and little time should be spent thinking about it at all. This primitive train of thought is refreshing for readers and makes the play enjoyable, unlike most plays set in the 18th century. The majority of the play contains dialogue of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern satarizing other plays with heavy connotations of death. This quote adequatley represents the playful tone of the work and the character's unique personality and point of view.
1 comment:
Great idea of portray a quote that shows the lack of sentimentality surrounding death. According to Stoppard, it is just and last stage of life.
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