Comparing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy :: Comparison Compare Contrast Essays

Comparing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy In 1967, Tom Stoppard wrote his famous play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead afterward getting the idea while watching a production of Hamlet. Four years later, Douglas Adams got the idea for his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria. In 1978, he would use this idea to produce a BBC radio show, which would be published as a invention in 1979. How can these two works be compared in their use of satire and cynicism? There are many instances of satire in Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Adams begins his story by describing the sun and goes on to say, Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended living forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. (1) By saying this, Adams shows that he does non think m uch of how humans are using technology, or their intelligence because they are so amazed by something fairly simple. According to Whissen, Adams message . . . is that besides much thinking to the highest degree things like the vastness of eternity and space and time can drive one mad. But instead of worrying round it, he takes control of it. (113) By presenting actual numbers, Adams puts the earth into the universes perspective. Though humans tend to make themselves the center of the universe, they are actually a small insignificant speck in everything. Adams goes on to explain more about the humans and their plight. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. many an(prenominal) solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because . . . it wasnt the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. (1) While making a joke about humans and their gener al discontentedness, Adams takes a different look at the monetary system. People feel that money will make them happy, but it does not actually work. Money is constantly being moved, yet that is not what is unhappy. People try to alteration other things to make themselves happy, but by this, Adams is suggesting that people should try to change themselves, rather than everything else.