Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

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April 30, 2022
Play Analysis
1 The relationship between human agency and fate has always been one of the most contested ideas in the world. This debate stems from whether our decisions affect our reality. Accordingly, Stoppard's play took this to the extreme by showing the characters' utter incapacity to make decisions about their reality. For example, both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern could not understand where they came from and where they were headed. They were subjected to the universe's randomness and other external forces to which they could only act passively. These instances emphasize that external and inevitable forces govern the characters' (and perhaps our own) actions, thereby debunking the concept of free will. 
Although Stoppard's play has some truth to it, I believe that the inevitableness of our death does not deprive us of human agency. Compared to what happened to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, we live our daily lives making decisions based on our own free will. The fact that we eventually die does not belie the fact that we make everyday decisions that could alter the course of fate. 
2 One of the main "repetitive or meaningless actions" illustrated in the play was the coin toss idea. In reality, coin tosses represent a 50-50 chance, thereby highlighting the idea of chances in our lives. In turn, this probably represents the idea of randomness, which belies the idea of fate. However, during the coin toss, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got 92 coin tosses with the same side in a row, thereby placing their actions in the realm of "improbability." This dialectic relationship between chance and improbability shows that the characters live within a realm governed by 'fate' to which they can do nothing but follow passively.
While we know that this deterministic realm does not follow reality, Stoppard's exaggeration emphasizes our incapacity to avoid death. Like how the coin toss landed the same side no matter how many times the characters tossed it, humans are also incapable of avoiding death. However, I believe that this is where the realm of determinism ends. Just as I have said ...