Difference Between Hamlet And Rosencrantz And Guildenstern example essay topic

Anagnorisis and Existence The Point of Realization in Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the young prince realizes what living is. Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, 105 All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there; And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix'd with baser matter (Hamlet, I, vs. 104-110) Upon realizing his fate - that he must save the "state of Denmark" - Hamlet must literally discard his prior knowledge and start anew. Aristotle argues that the exact moment when Hamlet realizes his fate - by moving from innocence and ignorance to knowledge - is the cause of tragedy in drama. Aristotle's calls this realization that all humans must have anagnorisis. For all the moaning and a whining about his situation, Hamlet will fight whatever is "rotten in the State of Denmark". (Hamlet, I, iv, 67) Though this self discovery is integral in Shakespeare's tragedy, Stoppard's two characters do not even address their fate.

And, the result of this lack of action and lack of any anagnorisis in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead when framed against the proactive Hamlet, Fortinbras and Laertes is an interesting commentary on human beings' reactions to mortality. Death is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not 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.

(R&D, 124) To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, death is lying in a box - bored. Their inability to comprehend death's complexity stems from the fact that even when alive, they are hardly present, barely hanging onto their existence. If we stopped breathing we'd vanish. (R&D, 112) Part of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's lack of existence is Stoppard's emphasis on the seeming interchangeability of their identities. However, whereas in Hamlet the King, Gertrude and Hamlet mistake the two for each other, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern actually mistake themselves. Their lack of identity leaves the two characters as not human - they literally do nothing and do not develop.

It is for that reason that, though they discover their fate, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern literally cannot die: they don't actually exist. So, when the time comes for their fate to catch up to them, they literally disappear. Hamlet, on the other hand, decides to pick up a sword. To be or not to be, -- that is the question: -- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them? (Hamlet, i, 63-67) While Hamlet was also contemplating suicide, the famous soliloquy is even more pertinent for it embodies the difference between the three major young men in Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras all take actions into their own hands, albeit sometimes not right away. It is this aspect of the Shakespearian heroes that Stoppard examines in his look at the other two.

Herein lies the eternal question that Stoppard poses: do you stand in line and take what He hands out or fight and "take arms against a sea of troubles?" Both are human responses to the understanding of fate and mortality. The first is the response of a sap, a sheep, someone who is part of other people's plots: a messenger. The second is the response of a hero, like the Celtic warriors who, when facing defeat from an opposing army, would make a futile but heroic march into the breaking waves because it was better for them to take death into their own hands than die at the hands of another. Clearly, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are messengers, but they don't exactly fit in the "stand in line and take what He hands out" because they are not fully aware of their fates. This is where Aristotle was correct: all humans must have an anagnorisis - all humans must move from ignorance to knowledge, even if it is at the point of death. However, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not move from innocence or ignorance to knowledge.

In fact, not only do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern not become enlightened, they do not develop at all. In fact, the duo's lack of action in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead mimics Hamlet's inaction throughout the first few acts of Hamlet. However, the difference between Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is that when the time comes, Hamlet picks up a sword and does do something - he struggles with the ultimate knowledge of man's fall from the garden, man's mortality - that's why Fortinbras honor's him "like a soldier". (Hamlet, V, ii, 405) The only other way to handle knowledge is to sit back and cry about it. Yet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern don't do that either. Thus, it is only fitting that they literally disappear - Stoppard's way of saying if you " re not fit to live, you " re not fit to die - because they do not respond to the most human truth: mortality.

The result of the lack of development in Stoppard's characters is that they are no longer characters or people all: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern vanish because they literally do not exist as human beings - they are neither sheep nor wolves, but literary devices used to convey a sense of contrast against the heroes of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Without knowledge of, acceptance of, or resistance to our human condition, there is no humanity.