Death on Stage Right

This is an unedited version of what I turned in for class. It's been revised since.

Gavin slid into his seat just as the final chime marking the eleventh hour sang out into the warm spring air. All the windows were open in the classroom on the edge of campus, and Gavin's seat by the window gave him a perfect view of the busy street before him. The professor stood at the edge of the wall of windows and cleared his throat to begin the class.

"Well, class, you've all finished reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for today." The professor looked around the room at the mix of bored and engaged students; his gaze settled on Gavin. "What do you make of the text, Gavin?"

Gavin had greatly enjoyed the text and was excited to begin the discussion. "I was intrigued with how Stoppard brought life to minor characters of another work, but what interested me most was the reality of death in the final scene. The characters knew that their death was imminent, and yet they applauded death performed by the actors that was a representation of what would actually happen to them. Then thinking that this text could be performed as a play itself gave it even deeper meaning to the four dead bodies in the final scene that would be actors taking a bow after the final curtain." Gavin's response was genuine, and he hoped to spend a great deal of their class discussing the reality of death in the play. He wore a satisfied smile after his opening remarks because the professor gave an approving nod near the end.

Gavin glanced out the window as the professor started his own response to Gavin's remarks. "Yes, it's interesting you bring up the perform-" The professor never finished his sentence.

With his full view of the street Gavin watched as a silver Jetta zipped from a side street and in front of a blue minivan that didn't have time to screech to a halt in time. A horrifying scream preceded the simultaneous crunch of metal and crash of glass. The middle aged woman driving the minivan had slammed on her breaks hard enough to leave streaks of rubber on the road behind her car. The crash happened in the middle of the professor's sentence, but, along with the rest of the class, he turned his attention to the window at the sudden interruption. Cars stopped on either side of the wreckage that spread across most of the three lanes. Glass glittered on the street in the late morning sunshine. From his seat, Gavin had a full view of the passenger side of the Jetta, which remained somewhat unaffected by the collision, and the rear end which displayed a broken brake light on the passenger side. Gavin could also see that the rear end of the minivan was untouched although the hood was crumpled up and windshield was shattered.

Before anyone was fully able to absorb the seriousness of the situation, a short, thick student bolted out of his seat and sprinted to the street. The class could see him run to the middle of the wreckage and peer into the window of the Jetta. He quickly turned his attention to the driver of the minivan and appeared to be shouting at a gathering crowd of witnesses.

A courageous student broke the silence in the classroom after everyone had stared out the windows for several minutes. "Should someone call 9-1-1?"

A few murmured affirmatively, but someone else pointed out that it looked as though one of the witnesses on the street was on their cell phone, likely with an emergency response operator. The professor attempted to return the attention to the conversation of the text. Most students struggled to turn their gaze from the scene unfolding outside the window, and the attempts to focus the students away from the tragedy were halfhearted. Gavin tried to give his full attention back to the class, but, like most of the students, he kept his eyes primarily on the window scene. He found an opportunity to comment on the anonymity of the primary characters when the professor asked the class about the value of a human life.

"Stoppard shows how these two lives mean nothing because the primary figures of the Hamlet storyline treat them as throw aways, but the two men equally demonstrate their agreement with the value judgment by their lack of action to avoid death. It's inevitable to them, so they have no reason to fight it."

"That's a good point. They have a lot of conversations about death throughout the whole play. So is the focus on death or on the -" Sirens cut short another of the professor's sentences as an ambulance and a fire truck made their way on to the scene. The class returned its full attention to the street as the emergency vehicles parked and silenced their blaring horns. Firemen and EMTs rushed to the two cars; the drivers of each had not moved in the ten minutes since the crash occurred. The scene unfolded before them like a silent drama as none of the frantic rescue workers' voices could reach through the window. Firemen helped the driver of the Jetta out of his car and over to the back of the ambulance. The response workers spent more time around the driver's door of the minivan before a stretcher was brought over to where they crowded around. The middle aged woman was maneuvered onto the stretcher and brought to the ambulance as the driver of the Jetta was escorted away.

At that point the professor chose to dismiss the class early with a comment about the opportunity to ponder the value of life in a different context.

Gavin was one of the first to leave the classroom, eager for the chance to find a few critical articles for the paper on this text which he would finish writing this weekend. He spent the rest of his afternoon crafting the arguments for his paper examining Stoppard's presentation of death in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. At dinner Gavin found a full table of students in the busy cafeteria and entered the middle of a conversation about the accident that afternoon.

"You were in the class too, weren't you, Gavin? Did you see the dead body?"

"Dead body?" Gavin looked up from his food. "I didn't know anybody died."

"Yeah, the driver of the minivan was dead by the time the EMTs got to her."

Gavin ate the rest of his dinner in silence, musing over the loss of life that had happened right before his eyes. The crash had looked like a scene lifted from a low budget action film, but there were no stunt people involved. The minivan driver's life was a throw away to the absent director of that cheap plot. The Jetta driver's life must only be enhanced by the close encounter; he, in fact, had been responsible for the accident, but was able to limp away from the situation. The Jetta driver was a careless Hamlet who threw away the life of Rosencrantz or Guildenstern without a thought. Perhaps he would think about it now, though. Perhaps Hamlet thought about the lives he had thrown away before his own death at the end of Shakespeare's play. Gavin realized that would be a great point that would make in his paper, so he hastily cleared his dishes and rushed to revise his paper in the bowels of the library.

Few students ventured into the depths of the library, which is why Gavin considered it the perfect place to write his papers uninterrupted. He ventured to the farthest corner where two old armchairs and a small coffee table where shoved out of the way of the rows and rows of books. Gavin had never found students in both chairs, and rarely was even one of them occupied. He was considerably surprised as he passed the final row of bookshelves to discover the short classmate who had ran on to the scene of the accident that morning curled up into one of the chairs. The other student acknowledge Gavin with a faint nod, but rested his head on his knees without a verbal greeting.

Still determined to sit in his favorite spot and draft out his thoughts about Hamlet's remorse (or lack thereof) after the careless treatment of two minor characters who had real lives in their own right, Gavin settled into the open chair and pulled out his computer. While his computer was warming up the short student, still with his knees pulled up on the chair and head bent down, spoke to Gavin.

"She had three kids." The student spoke softly; after a pause he said, "I held her hand as she took her last breath."

Gavin was unsure how to respond, so he stayed silent and turned his attention back to his paper.