by Samual Seward

Created on: February 10, 2009   Last Updated: March 06, 2009

Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, has many important motifs and themes which are essential. Within all these motifs heat and death are the most important. Heat and sex are important in the play in order to understand the idea that sex, like heat, becomes lustful and eventually becomes non-existent. Heat and sex, or lust, is the decomposing factor, which leads to room temperature. Tracing back one is able to t see the relationship between heat loss and sex.

The idea of heat in Arcadia is important in the underlying meaning of sex. The motif is deeply rooted in the play allowing the reader to comprehend many other ideas that are dealing with sex. Heat plays a crucial role, it allows Thomasina to understand the meaning of lust and that ultimately things will end. This idea remains a mystery in the play until the second act where Thomasina explains her diagrams to Septimus. Thomasina's experiment in her diagrams divulges the secret of heat within the play." It concerns your heat engine. Improve it as you will, you can never get out of it what you put in. It repays eleven pence on the shilling at most. The penny is for this author's thoughts." (76, Stoppard), Heat, like sex, concerns itself with lust, which eventually ends in nothing. This is most evident in the explanation of Mr. Noakes steam engine. Thomasina's explanation of Mr. Noakes's steam engine exemplifies the motif of heat in the play. Noakes engine cannot produce the amount of energy put into but will lose force leading ultimately to its demise. The motif describes death as an inevitable force because the energy can only go forward losing its power.

The motif can also be seen in the description of tea in Act II, Scene VII when Valentine understands the idea of heat with the description of tea eventually losing heat and ultimately becoming room temperature. "Well, it is odd. Heat goes to cold. It is a one-way street. Your tea will end up at room temperature. What is happening to your tea is happening to everything everywhere. The sun and the stars. It'll take a while but we're all going to end up at room temperature." (Stoppard, 78) Heat will become non-existent in the end leading to the inevitable loss of heat. This also relates to sex and lust in the play because the characters find themselves forced into a drama dealing with carnal embrace. Thomasina finds her proof for her idea of heat and explains it to Septimus. This proof leads up to the definition of sex. The idea that heat is lost is important in understanding

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