preview

Intelligence In Tom Stoppard's Arcadia

Decent Essays

Intelligence, it is something admired, appreciated, often coveted. Along with recognized and acknowledged intelligence, an individual acquires the respect of colleagues and the veneration of those around them. Intelligence, EQ vs. IQ, emotion vs. intellect, knowledge vs. love; this is a conflict that is exemplified in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. From a psychological perspective, this very conflict has such a dynamic impact on their characters that in the end, even though the characters seem to achieve an emotional connection with those around them, it’s strained by their inability to experience, empathize and even relate to typical human emotion. To understand the characters of Arcadia we have to analyze and deconstruct their behavior, reactions and …show more content…

This deprivation of an answer and the attempt at misdirection by Septimus is unsettling to Thomasina. In fact, this is a common factor for gifted children, in the article “Exploring Social and Emotional Aspects of Giftedness in Children,” the article discusses how factual based information plays an important role in intellectually gifted children’s lives, “The foolishness and unfairness of adults in authority can be particularly difficult for these gifted children to tolerate. To them, it makes no sense that anyone would not want to know the truth, have a mistake corrected, or know the best way to do something.” (Lovecky 10). For Thomasina, the illicit nature of the conversation, particularly for the time period in history, had little to no effect on her behavior, reaction and beliefs. She was emotionally disconnected from the topic of conversation because her intellectual ability to gain and then process the information she was seeking was all that mattered to

Get Access