Theme Of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Dead. Death. The play written by Tom Stoppard has a lot of talk about death. The play makes you very aware that one day everything will eventually die. It is also aware that death cannot simply be captured in art. If you were to read Hamlet before you were to read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead you would know how both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die and when they do. Even if you did not read Hamlet you could tell by the title of the play that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will die. Stoppard exaggerates the fatedness and inevitability of death.
Even from the start of the play we see the major theme of death. During the coin toss, the odds of the coin always landing on heads seems impossible. Yet, as we get further into the play we see that it really is not that odd, they represent the probability of life. Death always wins, as the player says “Life is a gamble, at terrible odds” (pg 106). The player means that no matter what risk you take in life we will all end up dead. This is the first time Stoppard alludes to the fact that everything dies. When the coin was flipped it always had the same outcome, heads. The same outcome over and over and over again. Just like life, it always has the same outcome. You cannot defeat death it always wins. Eventually everything will die.
Death is a sure thing but the play cast it in a unsettling light. Death itself may be a given, but the acceptance of death is not a given. Even though we now