Just by reading a scene, it makes me want to read the whole book and even watch the movie. I think it’s a very interesting story. It manages to portrait the characters only through the way they speak and act, without any description. Also the dialogue is very active and it is able to capture the reader’s attention. I think the good thing about theater plays is that the dialogue makes the story more realistic because we know exactly what each character says so it is possible to recreate the scene as if it was happening in real life.
I really like how Catherine is portrayed in this scene. She seems to be very selfish and mean with her father and with Hal but somehow the reader is not repulsed by her character. I think there’s a deeper reason for her behavior. It is interesting that she has inherited her father’s skills in mathematics but it also seems that she has inherited her father’s insanity. Maybe she blames her father so much because she knows that she’s like him. I think the reason for her behavior may be her father’s death but she’s also kind of aware of her similarity with him and is afraid to end up like him. She never stops claiming that he’s crazy, “The problem is you are crazy!”, “There’s nothing up there. It’s garbage. (…) He was crazy. There’s no ideas. It’s like a monkey at a typewriter. A hundred and three notebooks full of bullshit.” This shows us that she’s trying to convince herself that she’s not crazy, that she’s not like her father. When she’s talking with Hal, she says “No. I’m not crazy”, the words “I’m” are in italics, which stresses the point that she doesn’t want to be like him.
Also in her imaginary conversation with her father, she expresses her fear of having inherited his insanity. Her father tells her: “There are all kinds of factors. It’s not simply something you inherit. Just because I went bughouse doesn’t mean you will.” I think she’s kind of stuck in her life because she thinks she’s going to end up like Robert, she can’t move on and be successful because of this. Her father has had a huge impact on her, she not only inherited his abilities but her depression and her fear of not being normal is also provoked by what happened to him. We also notice their similarities when Catherine says that his father talked to people who weren’t there or imagined that aliens were sending him codes, but Catherine is also imagining having conversations with his dead father.
I think that when her father says that it is a good sign that they can talk about Catherine’s problems he means that it is a good sign that she is able to recognize what she’s doing wrong. She is aware that she may be crazy, she knows it’s not normal having conversations with dead people. “Crazy people don’t sit around wondering if they’re nuts.” Which is what Catherine does all the time, sits around wondering if she’s like her father, if she’s going to have the same life. Therefore, she’s not crazy. Crazy people are just crazy, they don’t realize it. I think that further on in the story Catherine will be able to forget about his father’s illness and appreciate his talent, so she’ll be able to move on and be herself, not an image of her dead father’s flaws. At least that’s what I would like to happen next in the story, it would be kind of boring if she had the same life as her father.
Why do you think “Proof” was the title of this play? Do you think the biological inheritances will turn out to be stronger than Catherine's unique personality? Is she condemned to have the same destiny as her father?
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