Themes In Arcadia

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Throughout the play Arcadia by Tom Stoppard there is a distinct difference between the characters who have a science background and those who do not. One of the recurring themes is that those characters and actions of those characters which are against science often lead to conflict and disaster. Even those characters that are of logical thinking for the most part are prone to disaster when they let go of this rational thinking and give in to their irrational side. Bernard is a main character who is not a scientist and has basically no scientific background. From the moment he is introduced, he is portrayed as eccentric and odd. Here Bernard is described for the first time: �Bernard, the visitor, wears a suit and tie. His tendency is to dress…show more content…
Thomasina is 13 years old when the play begins. She is a brilliant young woman especially in the field of mathematics and science. Most of her time is spent working on different problems and theories with her tutor Septimus Hodge. For the most part she is purely scientific with little knowledge of the irrational world. She bases her thoughts and ideas on logical and plausible evidence. She is constantly using logic and other techniques to prove various solutions to theories. She never concludes anything without an explanation. She wasn�t interested in love and didn�t want to study anything that didn�t pertain to mathematics. Septimus asks Thomasina why she hates Cleopatra and her response is, �Everything is turned to love with her. New love, absent love, lost love-I never knew a heroine that makes such noodles of our sex.� (38) Here Thomasina proves how she dislikes those which deal too much with love and emotion. She feels there is more satisfaction in mathematics and…show more content…
In the last scene Thomasina and Septimus are talking about her theory of how the world is doomed and then they begin to waltz. This shows the mixture of science and pleasure and at the same time rational and irrational thinking. In the beginning they are rationally talking about Thomasina�s theory but by the end they are acting impulsively waltzing and even kissing. This scene we know precedes her death. We learned earlier that she died that night before her seventeenth birthday in a fire. In this scene we get an idea of why the fire started. Thomasina truly gives herself up to irrational behavior. Her self-control is lost and lets herself become the opposite of what she was determined in the beginning to be. This scene give an idea of why an explanation why never found on her theory. � Take your essay, I have given it an alpha in blind faith. Be careful with the flame.� (96) This suggests that the essay, which could possibly have contained her explanation, was the cause of the fire which took her life. When Thomasina became reckless with her emotions she was doomed. For the most part, Thomasina has always been logical and once she became irrational it turned into a disaster that could never be reversed. Science was the root of the disaster as well. Her essay, which was filled with her scientific explanation, was what in the end what caused her death. It can
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