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Ross and Guil Are Dead Summary

 

            
            
            
            
             Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two well-dressed Elizabethan .
             men in the middle of a coin-spinning game. Their location is .
             featureless. Whoever calls the coin correctly wins it, and .
             Rosencrantz has been calling heads and winning dozens of .
             times. While he feels guilty about taking so much money from .
             his friend, he does not see the consistent "heads" tosses as .
             peculiar at all. Conversely, Guildenstern doesn't care about the .
             money, but he is disturbed by the lengthening series of "heads" .
             tosses. Rosencrantz is caught up in the game, but Guildenstern .
             wants to think about it theoretically. He begins thinking about .
             the laws of probability, focusing on the idea that if six monkeys .
             were thrown up in the air repeatedly, they would land on their .
             heads and tails about equally often. He tries to calculate the idea .
             of an "even chance" in his head: he just can't believe that the .
             coin could land heads-up so many times in a row if there was a .
             fifty-fifty chance each time that it would land tails. Rosencrantz, .
             however, continues to be embarrassed at his success, calling it .
             "boring," which irritates Guildenstern, who is very interested in .
             what is going on. Rosencrantz calls out that heads has come up .
             eighty-five times: a new record for him. Guildenstern gets .
             angrier, asking what Rosencrantz would have thought if the .
             coins had come down against him eighty-five times. Not .
             understanding that, in terms of probability, this outcome would .
             have been no different, Rosencrantz simply tells him he would .
             suspect that the coins were fake. Guildenstern wants .
             Rosencrantz to feel some awe, or even fear, at the strangeness of .
             the results of their game, but Rosencrantz cannot be moved. .
             Guildenstern imagines possible reasons that this could be .
             happening: he is willing it out of some unremembered guilt, or .
             God is willing it, or time has stopped and they are repeating the .
             same coin toss over and over. .
             Trying, more idly now, to understand, he asks Rosencrantz .


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