Finally, blogging about something that isn't Hamlet. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the time we spent with our angsty prince -- I definitely did, but I'm ready to move on. And move on we have! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (from now on referred to as R and G because that's a lot of typing) is quickly becoming one of my favorite works of the year. As it turns out, my dad was in this play when he was in high school, so he was very excited for us to start reading it. I'm pretty sure the copy of the book I'm using was his at one point. It has some blocking written in and is basically falling apart, something that I take as an indication that it was once in the possession of an enthusiastic teenage actor. But I'm getting off topic.
This play blew my mind. It's still blowing my mind. Initially, after we finished reading it, I was very confused. The ending seemed so abrupt -- did they actually die? What's up with the Player King? Why are they so confused all the time? Watching the movie helped start to answer some of these questions, but I was still pretty lost. I'm glad we watched the movie, though. The fact that Stoppard directed it helps me trust it a good deal more than if it had been someone else. However, I like the way we're viewing it as just another interpretation of the text.
When we started talking about the play and the film in class, I could pretty much feel my brain dripping out of my ears. R and G are summoned back to life each time the play begins? They're lost in between scenes because Shakespeare didn't write what happens then? Thinking about it now still confuses me. We read an essay that helped put down all of the crazy parts into words, but I didn't agree with the conclusion it drew that this play has no meaning. I think there's a meaning in there somewhere, but at this point I couldn't tell you what that meaning is.
It seems like most of the class thinks that there's an overall meaning, so we've had more discussions about what that could be. These discussions are based around the questions Ms. Holmes brought up earlier that I thought were just jokes -- "Can pirates happen to anyone?" "Are you on a boat?" "Are you entitled to some direction?" and "Is England just a conspiracy of cartographers?" It turns out that these questions are actually making for some pretty interesting discussion.
For the most part, I've really enjoyed talking about R and G. However, there are some aspects of the discussions that are getting on my nerves. Every time we try to talk about what a character's motivation for doing something could be, or why something happens, people bring up the Player King's line that says "it is written." Yes, I know it was written. I know Stoppard is trying to draw attention to that. But every other piece of literature we've looked at has been written as well! It would be nice if we could just have some discussion about possible motivations or reasons for things happening other than "Stoppard wrote it that way." I feel like we won't get anywhere in our discussions if we can't move past that.
In addition to reading and discussing R and G, we also worked on our Open Prompt skills, after being told that we were all pretty terrible at them. Looking back, it's true. My first response was awful and I'm embarrassed that it exists. I'm going to go back and edit it at some point because it really is pretty bad. To work on our prompt writing and answering skills, we did an assignment that I thought was probably the hardest thing we've done in this class all year. I didn't even come close to finishing it in the allotted time, so I'm pretty sure I'm doomed. Goodbye, lit grade. It was nice while it lasted.
Hi Emma,
ReplyDeleteThoughtful post. Really funny, too. I think it's neat that your dad did RGAD in high school, that's a pretty ambitious performance for teenagers. I couldn't imagine OHS dram tackling this one. Anyway, I share your same view on the first piece of criticism we read. The author's dismissal of RGAD as a meaningful piece of literature was a little rash, in my opinion, and I think, following our most recent discussions of the play in class, that it's safe to say he was missing the bigger picture. But then again, I suppose it's up to any interpretation--or lack thereof. I understand your frustration with the over-referenced Player quote, but I feel that the importance of that line cannot be overstressed, because Stoppard is emphasizing the lack of motivation that his characters possess (or at least the two titular ones). I think that this play, due to it's metaphysical themes and postmodern style needs to be analyzed in a different way. Once again, great post!
Eddie
Emma,
ReplyDeleteI, too, have enjoyed reading this play immensely over the past couple of weeks; and, like your copy, mine began to literally disintegrate during annotations. Maybe that's saying something about the quality of Stoppard's work... but I jest. It's the damn publishing company's fault. Anyway, my mind after our class's reading was left more confused than blown, and it continued to be that way even during annotations. I found myself running in circles, unable to pin down much of anything and essentially just giggling to myself at all the jokes and language puns. Class discussions and the film helped quite a bit, though now that we're done with reading the play and I've written my thoughts on it I think I've reverted to the giggling phase. Our class had a few strong supporters of the notion that Stoppard's play was, in fact, intentionally meaningless, and this kind of perturbed me, because dismissing a whole book as meaningless kind of countermands why one would even write a book; and even if he wrote the book to be meaningless, so what? I can still derive meaning from it, can't I? The thought police aren't going to stop me (unless they are, which in that case I'm screwed). I think some people, like the author who wrote the essay we read, are content with merely calling the play a little bit of intellectual comedy, but there are many like you and me who are not.
Hi Emma,
ReplyDeleteFunny post! The way you wrote this post, I could literally hear you saying this in my head as I was reading. A little creepy but you put yourself into the text and that's what matters. As for the confusion about R and G, I'm sure ALL of us went through a similar process. I'm a very visual learner, and after reading R and G, I can tell you this: one simply does not just VISUALIZE R and G playing in their head as we're reading it in class. The ideas are so abstract and I kept going back and forth between "am I over-thinking this?" and "wait, there's a deeper meaning to this...right?". I found it kind of funny that your class though this play is possibly meaningless, which my class never really considered. Apparently I also thought it was meaningless when I was writing my "response to course materials", but I've changed my mind since then. I think it might have been the movie that affected my views of the play. And I agree, knowing that Stoppard directed the movie made me feel a lot safer in trusting this 'interpretation', but I think it's still an interpretation. To me, it seemed that Stoppard was re-interpreting his previous work. Wait, even this might get confusing quickly so let's move on. After reading a few posts, I think it's safe to say 4/4 students thought AP Essays are hard to write and we need more work and help. I also went back and read my essays and basically dissed my all my essays. I too will be going back to change such terrible and embarrassing works.