away with the laws of probability. Tzara is not portrayed as a bumbling idiot as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are, but rather as a rare intellectual who has no problem accepting chaos, something that most people in society have trouble with. Stoppard uses his caricature of Tristan Tzara also to point out that a balance is needed between completely accepting chaos and not accepting it at all. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Stoppard portrayed the two extremes. Tzara is Stoppard's way of showing his audience that society is starting to get the right idea, but that Tzara and his Dada movement are a little off-target.Joyce and Lenin have different attitudes towards chaos and how society should deal with it. Both men recognize that society has a problem dealing with the thought that nothing is for certain. It is for this reason that both men seek to bring order to the chaos. Joyce feels that the role of the artist is to bring order to the chaos through art, or at least to have art be an orderly element of a chaotic world. Lenin felt that the role of government was to bring order to the chaotic society through strict governing. While criticizing modern society through the ideals of his characters, Stoppard also makes a mockery of the men themselves. One example of this is a scene in which Tzara makes fun of Joyce's famed encyclopedic knowledge without Joyce seeming to notice. In this exchange, Joyce asks Tzara, "Describe [Hugo] Ball by epithet." Tzara: "Unspherical. Tall, thin, sacerdotal, German." Joyce: "Describe him by enumeration of his occupations and preoccupations." Tzara: "Novelist, journalist, philosopher, poet, artist, mystic, pacifist, founder of the Cabaret Voltaire at the Meierei Bar, number one Speigelgasse."(Act I, pg. 38) Joyce is testing Tzara's knowledge but only seems vaguely interested in what he has to say. On the other hand, Tzara, the king of chaos and non-sequiturs, seems to be reading an encyclopedia to the ...
