The author of a famous play entitled “Proof”, David Auburn, became acknowledged thanks to it. The play was premiered in May 2000 and since that time it was so recognized and famous, that it was cinematized in 2005, starring Anthony Hopkins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Hope Davis. The play gives an important insight into the relationship between a father and a daughter. Both of them are keen on mathematics, and a father, who is a professor at the University, is regarded to be a genius of Mathematics. Then he becomes mentally incapable and his daughter has to take care of him. Then the author depicts the struggle of the protagonist with her genius and the possibility of getting the same mental ailment as her father got. The play explores many arguable and crucial topics and it also can be located in the context of other works, like, for example, the work “Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams. Both works have similar motifs and are using the same means of helping to deeper understanding the nature of the protagonists and the drama of the life them. The means, found within the given plays is the haunt of the protagonists by the absent presence of people from their past. It seems to be a rather complicated statement, nonetheless, it is easily discovered when either seeing the films and watching the plays, the protagonists’ minds constantly flashback to their past, creating illusions about it. Consequently, both works can be regarded as “ghost stories”, having special messages encoded into them.
Firstly, the composition of the plays is organized in a way to initiate either the reader or the one who watches a play or a film. The play “proof” has an unbroken composition, which goes and lets the person get to know about things gradually, until the end of the play, when it comes to the climax of it. While the composition of another play, namely “The Glass Menagerie” is presented from another angle to the audience. The narrator of the play (and he is a protagonist at the same time) is making preliminary remarks about the play. Basically what he does is that he gives an advance notice that the would-be subject of the play is presented as memories. So, it is a rather biased and may be exaggerated to some extent display of events, which had taken place some time ago in his own life.
Secondly, the plays are organized in a way that the past always penetrates the present of the protagonists. In the work by David Auburn, Catherine, who is a protagonist of the story, all the present, and the future events, taking place in her “life”, rest on the grounds, which were displayed in her past. For example, the father of the protagonist was a genius of math and also a teacher at the University. She is going in her fathers’ footsteps and chooses the same major. It turns out that her father tutored her in math, so the plot is starting from this very point. And the narrator of another play, Tom is talking himself about remembering his sister Laura, the famous scene in the play is the moment when Tom is leaving and the curtain goes down, still letting the audience see his mother Amanda and his sister Laura, those, whom he is going to leave. This effect gives a visual understanding of the fact that though they physically are not with him, they remain here, in an almost superstitial way. They remain with Tom on another level.
Then while Catherine is going through her life, her father dies. This episode is shown in a good way in the film. The film shows all the despair the protagonist turns out to be in. Firstly, she is disappointed as there is a great change in her life, secondly, she is confused as she does not know everyone from several people, who came to the funeral of her father, then, she does not appreciate the arrival of her sister (New Yorker) with whom she has tense relations and finally, she is about to lose her home, where she has spent some years with her father. One might infer that the heroine can not and does not want to let this past go. Tom, on the other hand, would be glad to break the ties with the past, but his relations with Laura especially do not let him do that. He is suffering from the pains of remorse for leaving her.
Thirdly, the connection of the protagonists with the past is so strong, that no matter how hard they try, the ghost of the past will follow them forever. Both the first and the second play show the lives of relatives. Considering the “Proof”, the protagonist inherits her father’s genius and there is nothing she can do about it. She tries to resolve the dilemma, put it in her life, but can not find the way out of it. Later on, the events unfold in the way, that she is likely to get the same mental disorder as her father did. The heritage is the tie, which doe not let the heroine let the past go as it is simply impossible from the point of view of the close connection. As for the other play, the audience of it is also dealing with one family. From one angle the connection is not very strong, namely, the connection of a mother with her son, but the tender relations between the brother and his sister tie the family and more or less unite it. Thus, though Tom is a grown-up, able to earn his own leaving young man, he still lives with his mother Amanda and his sister Laura, fully supporting them financially and being the only man in their family. The climax of the text is believed to be the scene, where Laura meets Jim (with whom she had a crush in high school) and when he tells her that he is engaged, Amanda, being disappointed blames Tom for making fun of her and Laura. Tom can not stand the accusations anymore and leaves. But the fact, which connects him to his past is a failure to implement his duty. He believed he was to help his sister to get married. The cost of Tom’s escape is the burden of memory. For him and the audience, it is difficult to forget the final image of frail Laura, illuminated by candlelight on a darkened stage.
It is hard to underestimate the role of the past in people’s lives. The two given plays are showing how essential the past is for the present and even the future. Whether it be the painful heritage or the pains of remorse. If one is not able to deal with it, to overcome it, the past will not let him go.
Concluding, it might be mentioned that both plays are really important in the present art as they give an essential insight into the inner conflict within the family and the solution, which might take place and within the protagonists themselves. The motifs of the plays are similar and they can be regarded as “ghost plays”, meaning that the absence in the present past does not let the protagonists be free from it and live a normal life. While the heritage of the heroine of the play “Proof” does not let her go in a literary physical sense, the feeling of unfulfilled duty does not leave the narrator and the protagonist of another play. This ghost plays to teach the audience to live one’s own life and being able to make a clean break from the past.
Works Cited
Michael Meyer. Bedford Introduction to Literature, 8th Ed, Bedford Books. 2008