Tom Stoppard

Arcadia, a play by Tom Stoppard, examines an English estate in two different time periods and discusses the relevance of the estate’s history. The audience travels back and forth in time as the present day characters learn about the lives of those who lived almost two centuries before them. While costumes, actors, and syntax styles make time travel evident to the audience, the set does not shift at all. Furthermore, all props that are used on stage remain there, whether they be a quill pen or a coffee mug. One prop in particular, a tortoise, is used throughout both worlds. This tortoise best exemplifies one of the major themes of the play, that history is relevant for as long as it matters to someone. In 1809, the audience meets a young girl, Thomasina, and her tutor, Septimus. As they learn about and prove theories well ahead of the time period, a guest in the home, Ezra Chater, learns that his wife has been caught with another man. The play then shifts to the present day, where a writer, Hannah, meets Bernard, a…

sitting right between the poles. Tom Stoppard shapes Thomasina, the one character with the perfect balance of thinking with her brain and with her heart, to emphasize both the other character’s imperfections and contrast them further against her. Being too cerebral and analytical is detrimental to people’s social lives. All through Arcadia, several characters are written as cold academics, lacking in the emotional department. Hannah, the most analytical thinker in the novel, takes the cake for…

Heads or Tails? The play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was written in 1966 by Tom Stoppard and explores the experience of two minor characters from the Shakespeare play, Hamlet. Stoppard began his play during the travel of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Denmark. However, only someone who knows the play Hamlet can understand why they are traveling. In Hamlet 's life so far his father had passed away, and his mother married his uncle. Hamlet is told he is not allowed to…

reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don’t take no stock in mathematics, anyway.” (16) But ironically Mark Twain chooses such a character to be the narrator and main character of his novel. As seen at the end of the book, Tom and Huck reunite and Tom hatches a plan to help Jim escape from the shed. Tom says that their plan needs to be like the ones in the books. “Why, hain’t you ever read any books at all?—Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chelleeny,…

Huckleberry Finn, he wrote in 1884 (Samuel). Mark was born in Florida on November 30, 1835 to John Marshall and Jane Clemens. Twain grew up in Hannibal along the Mississippi River, which held “some of the happiest moments of his childhood” he stated (Samuel). Mark Twain was said to be an “American humorist and novelist, captured a world audience with short stories of boyhood adventure and with commentary on man’s shortcomings that is humorous even while it probes, often bitterly, the roots of…

Discussion Questions for “Run, Lola, Run” 1. Why do you think Tom Tykwer’s film was so extraordinarily popular, not only in Germany but throughout the world? I think the film was popular because it was a fusion of the fast-paced nature of American films with the artistic elements of German film. That makes it appreciable to several markets, worldwide. 2. The film tells the same story three times. Which elements are exactly the same each time? Which elements change? Are there any elements which…

important role as one of the themes throughout the entire novel titled, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written by one of America’s greatest writers in all of its history, Mark Twain. As the novel acts as an extension of Mark Twain’s other publication, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it goes on in the point-of -view of Huckleberry Finn and his adventures after trying to leave his “incarcerating” establishment and his drunk and abusive father, who in fact…

with a piece of iron. Hannibal inspired several of Mark Twain’s fictional locations. Twain became one of the best storytellers in the West. Twain became somewhat bitter in his later years. In 1935 Ernest Hemingway wrote, “ All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn”, making an interesting point. Huck Finn took years to perfect and write, and often Twain pushed it aside, but it was finally published in 1884. After seven years of starting to write the…

Module A Within our daily lives, we are provided with an abundance of visual images from a variety of sources. From daily television shows and commercials, to the billboards seen on the way to school or work, by using prior knowledge and background experiences, ideas start forming. Visual messages are also conveyed in traditional forms such as films, novels, picture books and more. This is displayed in the film ‘Run Lola Run’ by Tom Tykwer and the picture book “The red tree” by Shaun Tan,…

I’ll go to hell.” (191) At this point he rips the paper up as well as the shackles that society had put on him from a very young age. Right now Huck has already matured beyond what several adults will ever be. He would consign himself to hell in order to do what he thinks is right even though everybody else would tell him differently. He has clearly seen for the first time that Jim is his friend and that Jim is just as human as he. Huckleberry is even mature enough to step out of his childish,…