Victoria Palacios Merino

Group A

Tom Stoppard and the surrealism

In this paper I am going to compare three plays written by Harold Pinter. These plays are “The real thing”, “The real inspector Hound” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead”.

The topic we are going to talk about is the Surrealism. It is the most important topic in these plays. I think so, because it mixes fiction and reality in his plays. When he mixes both of them he shows the knowledge of social reality in these times. I think this topic is the most important because it shows independence which is not usual when the society follows the same idea from life.

In these three plays you can see how the author wants to show the fact that the life of the characters have in this time and also contrast the fiction in his plays.

In “the real thing” Tom Stoppard shows one of the characters, in and out of the fact, two types of life: on the one hand, Henry, one of the main characters, loves writing plays because he wants to criticise life in prison or other aspects. On the other hand he works in the other places (writing for TV. ...) because he needs more money to survive In addition, you can see that the author tell about his relationships, for example another characters as Charlotte (first wife of Henry), Annie (sweet girl), Max; Debbie or Brodie (second characters) with. In these situations, Henry shows several points of the intention of Tom Stoppard in this play at the same way that the other plays as “The real inspector Hound” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead”.

Henry and Tom Stoppard are authors of them plays and love the theatre in the same way. Besides, they use an intelligent way of language, but the most important feature that I see and say at the beginning of this paper is that they are two human characters that reflect them thought in them performance.

In conclusion, while the other authors write about objective topic: the quotidian life, for example; Tom Stoppard writes about his feeling, subjective view of life. Tom Stoppard uses Henry from shows clearly “the free speech” clearly. Besides, Debbie is another important example of it because it has an unusual thought of his times.

The other plays are developed similarly, but in my opinion the author’s intention in this plays is to be clearer than the other.

In “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead” we can see another type of feelings about life. They are two characters of Shakespeare’s plays represented by mains characters that Tom Stoppard shows how two characters worried about death. In this way, he shows one of the most important themes of the human life: the death and own destiny. It has not objective meaning as we see in “the life beginning when you are born and the end is the death”.

.Actually, I feel identified with his point of view. To conclude, the author gains the public because his feeling is near to them and it is important if you want to be understood by them.

In “The real inspector Hound” we can see the same intention of the author but the comedy way. He talks about love, life… but the sense of comedy is more interesting in this plays because we feel the ironic criticism.

The author shows the same intention in his literature in everyone of this plays parallel stories. In conclusion, he wants to show people that politics or rest of the citizens should not have any kind of influence in what people think.

I chose this topic of surrealism because when I read the biography of Tom Stoppard I thought quickly that this topic was the most important in this context where you shouldn’t tell your feelings because people are suppressed by the other people in this context. We must know that we drive the life, and then, the life does not drive us.