The British moon landing parodies the Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole led by Robert Falcon Scott since the astronauts, rather than dying together, turn on one another in adversity. Blinded by grief, he steps on and crushes the tortoise, which forms the other part of the demonstration. The bathetic climax comes when George, firing an arrow to demonstrate Zeno's paradox, accidentally shoots dead a pet hare that he uses to model the fable of The Hare and the Tortoise. It has been said that Jumpers is "a play often dismissed as too clever by half", but a number of other writers have listed it among Stoppard's highest achievements.Ī significant element of the play is George's unavailing efforts to define 'Good' and other philosophical abstractions in which he demonstrates his foolishness and lack of connection with the real world. It was inspired by the notion that a crewed moon landing would ruin the moon as a poetic trope and possibly lead to a collapse of moral values. Jumpers raises questions such as "What do we know?" and "Where do values come from?" It is set in an alternative reality in which some British astronauts have landed on the moon and "Radical Liberals" (read pragmatists and relativists) have taken over the British government (the play seems to suggest that pragmatists and relativists would be immoral since Archie says that murder is not wrong, merely "antisocial").
It explores and satirises the field of academic philosophy by likening it to a less-than-skilful competitive gymnastics display. Jumpers is a play by Tom Stoppard which was first performed in 1972. Moore is about to loose the arrow and to disprove Zeno's arrow paradox. Michael Hordern as the philosopher George Moore, from the playtext cover.
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