The Comparison of play and movie. Play Proof and the Movie A Beautiful Mind - Essay Example

The Comparison of play and movie The unusual life and mind of a mathematician seems to be the main theme on display by both the play Proof and the Movie, A Beautiful Mind. The two works of literature highlights the uniqueness of mathematicians, with a special emphasis on the difficulty of becoming a mathematical genius. In essence, the Play, Proof and the Movie, A Beautiful Mind serves to equate mathematics with some form of madness, since it is mathematical accomplishments and struggles that have rendered the characters in both the play and the movie as unstable (Ebert, 42). In the play, the mathematical aspect does not only result to the mental instability of the main character, Robert, but it also affects both her daughter and a colleague, Hal, rendering their path of life similarly unusual. None of the three characters can be judged to exhibit any form of perfect mental status, since even after the illness of Robert, both Catherine and Hal continues to struggle with the mathematical prove concept, which renders them mentally unstable and full of paranoid thoughts, dreams, hallucination and expectations. It is the same case with the movie, A Beautiful Mind, where the desire to prove a mathematical concept has rendered the life of John uniquely unusual, leading to his suffering from an illness, which otherwise may not have been the case. The life of a mathematician is a difficult and unusual; marred with struggles and problems, before eventually an achievement is registered. Therefore, the two works serve to call upon others to appreciate the value of the efforts and struggles that mathematicians have applied to come up with the mathematical concepts that are provable and applicable today. Nevertheless, the play, Proof and the movie A Beautiful Mind serves to show the relationship between living an antisocial life and the mental instability and schizophrenia disease. In the play and the movie, the character are rather very antisocial people, who rarely have time to interact with the others, since theirs, is a commitment to the main objective; mathematical accomplishment (Alexanderson, n.p.). In the play, Proof, there are very few instances of socialization between Robert, Catherine and Hal, and the rest of the world. They seem to be dedicated to their course of proving the mathematical concepts they are developing, and only socialize with others as a matter of necessity (Auburn, 52). Despite both Robert and Hal being lecturers, they are rarely portrayed socializing outside their core duty. The same happens for John, in the movie, A Beautiful Mind. John has not been depicted to be a sociable person, since even when he spends time and plays games with his friends; his mind is always fixed on the accomplishment he is aiming at. His socialization with his wife is also unusual, since they rarely socialize in a productive manner (Ebert, 37). Both the play, Proof and the movie, “A Beautiful Mind”, serves to teach a valuable lesson on the value of socialization and interaction with others, which could be a solution for the hallucination and the paranoid thoughts depicted by the mathematicians in these two literary works. Dream and hallucinations are core concepts of both the Proof and A Beautiful Mind. In the play, Proof, both Robert and her daughter have lived life of dreaming and hallucinations, which are highly inspired by their extraordinary intelligence, thus their high need to prove their mathematical prowess. The urge to prove the mathematical discovery cannot allow any of them to sleep, and thus they consistently engage in dreaming and hallucinations, all the time regarding the mathematics discovery (Alexanderson, n.p.). The same aspect of dream and hallucinations is noticeable in the movie A Beautiful Mind, where John Nash cannot stop dreaming and having these paranoid thoughts that eventually saw him admitted to a psychiatric hospital involuntary. Having been a brilliant mathematician, he delves deeply into the mathematical concept of calculus, which eventually sees him run from the normal brilliant mathematician, to a kind of mentally depressed individual, who cannot accurately be judged as either insane or slightly mentally disturbed. The paranoid thoughts emanated from his days in graduate school, where he wanted to succeed and at least come up with an original idea (Goldsman, 27). This inner desire has pushed him to keep thinking of an original idea that he can invent, to the extent that such thoughts have become part of him. During the day and even at night, the dreams and hallucinations remain the same. In both the play, Proof and the Movie, A Beautiful Mind, dream and hallucinations are part of the characters, who really tries to make major accomplishments in the field of mathematics, which eventually makes then mentally unstable. The family relationship is another concept that has been applied in both the Proof and A Beautiful Mind. The play, Proof presents the relationship between Robert and her daughter Catherine, whom comes back to take care of his father once he got ill. The father-daughter relationship is illustrated as close and influential, since the father manages to influence her daughter during the period they lived together, to become a mathematical genius as he was (Auburn, 47). However, the influence was not only felt in the sharing of the mathematical prowess, but also in the share of the mental instability. Both Catherine and her father appears as somewhat mentally unstable, although his father’s status is worsened by his illness. Catherine has been influenced too much by her father, to the extent of fearing that she could be suffering from the same disease that her father is suffering from, schizophrenia. The same family relationship is presented in the Movie, A Beautiful Mind, although this time it is a relationship between a husband and wife, John and Alicia (Goldsman, 23). The two have lived together for a reasonable period and have adapted to each other, such that it is not even possible for Alicia to know that her husband is going mad, when he starts showing the signs of the disease. The two have interacted in a rather unusual way, as would not be expected for a normal relationship between a husband and wife, such that it is not easy to accurately tell whether Alicia is fully mentally stable. The struggle for a comeback is another aspect that persists in both the play Proof and the movie A Beautiful Mind. In the play, Robert is a mathematical genius who is persistently being faced by the risk of disease that threatens to destabilize his mind completely. He suffers mental instability on an on-and-off pattern, but all the time tries to make a comeback and recover from his illness (Auburn, 12). Despite the fact that the attempts are difficult to bore any fruits, they eventually chart a way through which mind instability becomes the avenue for making discoveries and solving mathematical problems that have been a concern for long. Every moment he appears to regain clarity and mind stability, he embarks on reestablishing his mathematical research. The same case applies for John, the main character in the movie, A Beautiful Mind, who seems in a perpetual struggle for a comeback. He has made several failures in his life, including being defeated in a game by his friends, but such failures do not deter him from making a comeback. In fact, from the failures, John seems to see opportunity, as exemplified by the game they were playing with his friends, where his defeat made him perceive the rules of the game as flawed, and thus embarked on a path to review the rules of the game, and eventually charts his way to mathematical prowess (Kirszner and Stephen, 22). Works Cited Alexanderson, Gerald. Mathematical association of America: Osserman interviews David Auburn, Author of proof. Web accessed April 2nd 2013 Auburn, David. Proof: A Play. New York, NY: Faber and Faber, 2001. Print. Ebert, Roger. Roger Ebert's Four-Star Reviews, 1967-2007. Kansas City, Mo: Andrews McMeel, 2007. Internet resource. Goldsman, Akiva. A Beautiful Mind: The Shooting Script. New York: Newmarket P, 2002. Print. Kirszner, Laurie G, and Stephen R. Mandell. Compact Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing 8th edition. Boston, Mass: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. Print. Read More