Comparative Coursework: Arcadia Tom Stoppard and Atonement Ian McEwan
‘The future is disorder.’ Compare ways Stoppard and McEwan present the effects of order and
disorder in Arcadia and Atonement.
In modern literature, there is often a fierce tension between predestination and free will. This is
particularly evident in Arcadia1 by Tom Stoppard and Atonement2 by Ian McEwan where the
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desire for order is central to the modern texts. The idea of a disordered future is explored in
Arcadia, Valentine states: ‘The future is disorder… It’s the best possible time to be alive, when
almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.’ How can there be an exact order to our lives
when the weather cannot be correctly predicted in twenty-four hours? As humans, we are
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comforted by order and the old, Newtonian certainties. For the character of Briony in
Atonement, determinism is a kind of artistic choice. McEwan portrays her as a novelist who
plays with narrative structures: what works and what does not work. However, chaos theorists
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argue that there are situations where order ceases to function. According to Carnot’s second law
of thermodynamics, ‘the entropy of the universe can only increase.’3 The natural state of the
universe is chaos set against the human desire to impose order.
Arcadia is a play with an ‘extraordinarily rich concentration of wordplay and loopy
misunderstandings.’4 The play moves through a wall of time, from the ordered to the disordered,
1
Stoppard, T. (1993). Arcadia. London: Faber & Faber.
2
McEwan, I. (2002). Atonement. London: Vintage.
3
Feynman, R. (1969). Feynman Lectures, vol. I (46-8, -9).
4
Leithauser, B. (2013). Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia,” At Twenty. The New Yorker.
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,as though two parallel plays are taking place 180 years apart in the same room where ‘time is so
supple and an elusive medium.’5 Stoppard stresses through scenes set in 1993 that what may be
a trivial event in 1809 and 1812 can be interpreted to have important consequences as time
progresses. In the denouement, the two worlds combine and there is an obvious stress on what
goes from ‘classical calm to romantic chaos.’6 Arcadia begins with an apparent order,
particularly stressed by the interrelation of the past and the present together. Arguably, this order
is eroded and fades throughout time. However, where chaos apparently occurs, such as in
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Thomasina’s death, Valentine argues that order is still present: ‘In an ocean of ashes, islands of
order. Patterns making themselves out of nothing.’ The table in the room is full of various
objects by the end of the play, to an outsider, this would seem disordered. According to
thermodynamics, Entropy is supreme.7 However, for the audience there is a sense of order that is
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brought together in Stoppard’s exploration of two moments in history and, therefore, events do
not seem disordered from our perspective. Through art, science, and mathematics, a network of
order can be distinguished among the complexities of life - this is demonstrated in Thomasina’s
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iterated algorithms.
Whilst having a romantic temperament, Bernard also thinks linearly - ensuring that the data he
collects is from multiple sources in which he tries to impose an ordered pattern to the events, like
Briony in Atonement: ‘I've proved Byron was here and as far as I'm concerned he wrote those
lines as sure as he shot that hare.’ Unfortunately, his logic is flawed as he looks for patterns
5
Ibid.
6
Independent. (2009). Is Tom Stoppard's Arcadia the greatest play of our age?
https://www.independent.co.uk. Web. 2018.
7
Bloom, H. (2009). Tom Stoppard. Infrobase Publishing.
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, based on his desired conclusions. The tension between order and disorder is also evident in the
garden at Sidley Park, which was in the process of changing at the beginning of the play. The
redesign of the park ‘represents the intellectual shift in Europe at the time.’8 Lady Croom, from
the upper class, is obviously rather unimpressed that her classic, geometrical garden was being
demolished: ‘My hyacinth dell is to become a haunt for hobgoblins.’ The garden was redesigned
in a typically Romantic style, following on from what was popular in Europe at the time.
Previously, the style would be seen as distasteful as it seems disorderly. Hannah describes the
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garden she sees as ‘the Gothic novel expressed in landscape. Everything but vampires.’ Notably,
Hannah admires symmetry, logic and the Enlightenment - similarly to Briony in Atonement. It is
Hannah’s view that causes her to be at odds with Bernard. Again, whilst on the surface, things
may seem disorderly, there is an order to be discovered.
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On the other hand, ‘the postmodern novel often flaunts its artificiality.’9 In Atonement, Briony’s
expression of reality is based on other texts - proving her to be an unreliable narrator. The
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intertextuality in Atonement forms the order that Briony likes to impose with McEwan’s
influences from Jane Austen, Shakespeare and, Lord Byron. Arguably, what is order and
disorder in Atonement is dependent on whether Briony believes it is exactly what it should be.
Much like Hannah in Arcadia who says: ‘It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise
we're going out the way we came in.’ As the unreliable narrator, Briony interprets the world in
terms of the books she has been reading, and throughout the novel, she is desperate to impose
8
Independent. (2009). Is Tom Stoppard's Arcadia the greatest play of our age?
https://www.independent.co.uk. Web. 2018.
9
Middleton, K. (2017). Atonement by Ian McEwan. English Review. Vol 28 no. 2. Pp. 21.
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