If an arcadia is defined as a Renaissance-era utopia of nature and harmony, Tom Stoppard has a very peculiar interpretation of paradise. His drama, Arcadia, is increasingly chaotic, depicting three subplots that span distinct characters in two different time periods: an 1809 cast and a present day troupe. He bounces various extramarital affairs and mathematical quandaries between the eras, challenging the past characters to unravel these conflicts and the present-day characters to decipher the past. Each subplot is written so that one cannot follow a linear narrative within each era; the plot details cryptically bounce between past and present, till the two eras converge in a surrealist last act. In this way, Stoppard subverts the traditional
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Stoppard opens his work in 1809 at Sidley Park with the tale of a tutor, Septimus, and his 13-year-old pupil, Thomasina. Through an investigation of chaos theory, Thomasina creates her own iterative algorithm, but is then slowly discluded from the story, only for her name to reemerge as the modern-day scientist Valentine revisits her math primers in a study of grouse-population algorithms. Otherwise, Thomasina’s struggle is eclipsed by her tutor’s extramarital affairs with one Mrs. Chater and, as the time period shifts to the present, the scholar Barnard's attempt to prove that the philandering Lord Byron shot Mr. Chater over an affair with his wife. The confusion between Septimus’ ventures and Barnard’s assumptions is increasingly complicated as Barnard’s historical evidence overlaps Septimus’ acts. The present-day scholar Hannah Jarvis furthers this confusion as she attempts to disprove Barnard’s assumption while simultaneously undertaking an independent project to discover the identity of the Sidley Park hermit, whose hermitage was found filled with nonsensical, Thomasina-esque math. In this way, discoveries within each time-period and subplot convolute the other stories’ aspects: Hannah’s discoveries elucidate more about Thomasina’s work and fate, Septimus’ acts convolute Barnard's assumptions, and the …show more content…
For, in the words of Hannah Jarvis:
[Knowledge] It's all trivial – your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron. Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife… Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite… but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final. (Stoppard 59)
It is the pursuit of knowledge that is arcadia, not the knowledge itself. The very act of of melding narrative fragments together, of tracing and interpreting knowledge is divine. When Stoppard abandons the traditional narrative structure and creates a nonlinear plot line, he is merely exemplifying this idea by forcing the reader to analyze a complex, convoluted progression of information and contemplate the flow of knowledge herself. The bland conclusions of all of Stoppard’s story arcs mimics this same principle. By anticlimactically concluding each plotline, Stoppard conveys that when knowledge is plainly stated, no satisfaction emerges. The conclusion to the drama is fleeting, but the struggle to gain that conclusion is infinite, and it is only through this struggle, this search can one find
Stoppard opens his work in 1809 at Sidley Park with the tale of a tutor, Septimus, and his 13-year-old pupil, Thomasina. Through an investigation of chaos theory, Thomasina creates her own iterative algorithm, but is then slowly discluded from the story, only for her name to reemerge as the modern-day scientist Valentine revisits her math primers in a study of grouse-population algorithms. Otherwise, Thomasina’s struggle is eclipsed by her tutor’s extramarital affairs with one Mrs. Chater and, as the time period shifts to the present, the scholar Barnard's attempt to prove that the philandering Lord Byron shot Mr. Chater over an affair with his wife. The confusion between Septimus’ ventures and Barnard’s assumptions is increasingly complicated as Barnard’s historical evidence overlaps Septimus’ acts. The present-day scholar Hannah Jarvis furthers this confusion as she attempts to disprove Barnard’s assumption while simultaneously undertaking an independent project to discover the identity of the Sidley Park hermit, whose hermitage was found filled with nonsensical, Thomasina-esque math. In this way, discoveries within each time-period and subplot convolute the other stories’ aspects: Hannah’s discoveries elucidate more about Thomasina’s work and fate, Septimus’ acts convolute Barnard's assumptions, and the …show more content…
For, in the words of Hannah Jarvis:
[Knowledge] It's all trivial – your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron. Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife… Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite… but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final. (Stoppard 59)
It is the pursuit of knowledge that is arcadia, not the knowledge itself. The very act of of melding narrative fragments together, of tracing and interpreting knowledge is divine. When Stoppard abandons the traditional narrative structure and creates a nonlinear plot line, he is merely exemplifying this idea by forcing the reader to analyze a complex, convoluted progression of information and contemplate the flow of knowledge herself. The bland conclusions of all of Stoppard’s story arcs mimics this same principle. By anticlimactically concluding each plotline, Stoppard conveys that when knowledge is plainly stated, no satisfaction emerges. The conclusion to the drama is fleeting, but the struggle to gain that conclusion is infinite, and it is only through this struggle, this search can one find