What Does Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead Represent

Symbols and Motifs in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
In his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard presents a plethora of symbols and motifs ranging from the coins, the boat, and gambling, all of which reinforce the reoccurring theme of the incomprehensible nature of the world around us. At the beginning of the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are introduced flipping coins as a game symbolize the randomness of the world. The coin continued to land head, up to “eighty-nine” times, the pattern of coin after coin landing heads up defies the already established “law of averages” challenging Rosencrantz’s previous understanding of the world. Instead of backing the aforementioned law,the coins suggest that the world is ruled not by law and order, but instead by randomness and chaos. Much like the coins, Rosencrantz and
Determinism is often seen as the antithesis of randomness, determinism being the idea that things happen according to some indestructible plan. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Stoppard combines the ideas of randomness and determinism to suggest that chance is not random but actually deterministic. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feel that there is nothing they can do to counterbalance chance’s determinist force, just as there is nothing they can do to stop the coins from landing heads side up. In concurrence with the randomness of the world, the coins also stand in for the play’s exploration of oppositional forces. The coins are two sided, a fact that can be forgotten due to the long string of heads which make them seem one sided, a fact the audience is reminded of when a coin lands tails side up. This duality parallels the many sets of opposing forces in the play, from the division between Rosencrantz’s