Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. From the very beginning we know what the ending is going to be. Most movies and stories hide that from readers and movie until they reach it, throwing the audience through various loops along the way. But not Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. We know they are going to die. It's in the very title of the play. The fun part is the comedic story in between. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are secondary characters in Hamlet. They aren’t entirely important and that’s what I feel the hidden message in this story is.

Making important choices can be really hard. But not making them and just passively going along can have dire results. From the very beginning they are answering to other people. They are on the way to the king whom had summoned them and they can barely remember whom they are or where they are going. They are summoned; they do what they are told basically spying on Hamlet when they are supposed to be his best childhood friends. They simply follow the word of the most powerful person around them at the time, which happens in this case to be the king. They briefly question if going to England is the right thing to do for themselves but off they go anyways.  

The primary example of this is when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern open the letter they are to give the king of England and read it. The letter calls for Hamlet’s death, the death of their friend. But instead of doing a wide array of things such as maybe getting rid of the letter, telling Hamlet, or forging a new one, they just reseal it and go along with it. This fatal mistake of letting fate take it’s course is what got them killed for Hamlet had overheard and changed the letter to call for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s deaths.

This play is about being a secondary character. We can’t be secondary characters in our own lives. If we just ride along in our lives letting people push us around letting them tell us what to do, we won’t get anywhere.