33 pages • 1 hour read
David AuburnProof
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Catherine
Catherine, the play’s protagonist, turns 25 at the start of Act I. She has spent the last several years caring for her father, Robert, as his mental health declined. Like her father, Catherine is a gifted mathematician, and she worries that she might also have inherited his mental illness.
When the play begins, Catherine’s father has just died. To care for Robert, Catherine is forced to drop out of Northwestern in the first semester of her undergraduate degree. Over the past several years, Catherine has become invisible, focusing her life on her father while failing to take care of herself. Robert accuses her of wasting her life and her talent by not using the time she has to work. Catherine is emotionally guarded but opens up to Hal when he demonstrates that he sees her as an entity separate from Robert.
In response to the sudden intimacy that Catherine finds with Hal, she reveals that she has not, in fact, wasted the years she spent caring for her father. While Robert was asleep, she spent her nights working on a proof, a mathematical argument that proves a mathematical statement (or theorem) is true. Her proof solves a long-standing and fundamental mathematical problem and uses techniques that are complex even for Hal, who has a doctorate in math, to comprehend. When Hal does not believe that she wrote the proof, she takes this as a severe betrayal of trust. Catherine nearly gives up and allows her estranged sister, Claire, to move her to New York where Claire will care for her like Catherine cared for their father.
Catherine fights the role of the genius as if it is synonymous with mental illness, but she finally accepts her gift at the end of the play when she begins to explain the proof to Hal.
Robert
The play begins on the eve of Robert’s funeral. Robert, who is in his fifties, is Catherine and Claire’s father and only appears in flashbacks and as an imaginary ghost conversing with Catherine. Robert is a highly celebrated mathematician and academic, whose stellar career was cut short when his mental illness ended his ability to focus and work. Four years prior to his death, Robert had a lucid period. Although he never produced more research, he returned to the university and was able to advise graduate students.
Catherine describes the years when her father was unable to care for himself, but the play only shows him when he is lucid and at the start of his final decline. Robert prioritizes his work over everything, even as his work becomes illogical. He had graphomania as a symptom of his illness, and wrote constantly, filling 103 notebooks. Although he was only able to contribute to his field for a short time, Robert is well loved and admired, and many of his peers attend his funeral.
Robert’s interactions with Catherine make clear that he felt close to her. Robert believed in Catherine, stating that she might carry on his legacy even though she was a year behind her peers. He jokes with Catherine about things like pasta, revealing a witty personality. During life, he feared that he would never make another mark on academic history, and he was disdainful of his periods of mental weakness, suggesting that he was a proud man.
Hal
One of Robert’s former doctoral students, Hal has volunteered to read through Robert’s notebooks in case his former mentor wrote anything valuable. Hal’s own work is lackluster and unoriginal, which he acknowledges. At 28, Hal is quickly reaching the age when he is statistically unlikely to make any great discoveries or contributions in his field, and he is hyper-aware of that fact.
Hal plays drums in a band with other math scholars. Hal struggled through his dissertation, and although he idolizes Robert, finds it difficult to reconcile the fact that Robert’s daughter exceeds him academically despite having very little formal education. After Hal and Catherine sleep together, Catherine entrusts him with her proof. She accuses him of being manipulative when he doesn’t believe that she wrote it. However, Hal demonstrates throughout the play that he is largely guileless and awkward. In the end, he manages to connect with Catherine by respecting her ownership of the proof and listening while she explains it.
Despite being awkward, Hal is sensitive and empathetic toward Catherine. He expresses his desire to be near Catherine the morning after their intimate encounter, and he asks her to stay in Chicago when she’s preparing to leave. He also finds a sentimental note that Robert wrote before his death, and Hal plans to wrap it and give it to Catherine as a birthday present. He has a soft spot for Catherine and even defends her to Claire, suggesting that Catherine is stronger than Claire realizes.
Claire
Claire is 29 and is four years older than her sister, Catherine. Claire has very little of her father’s genius but also seems to have escaped the curse of his mental health issues. Before Robert’s health fully declined, Claire escaped to New York, earned her bachelor’s degree, and has shaped a very average and steady life for herself. She recently became engaged to her long-time boyfriend, Mitch, with little fanfare.
Although Claire avoided the emotional burden of caring for her father, she has provided financially for her father and sister. Claire managed to pay off the mortgage on the house in Chicago while living her own life in Brooklyn. When she returns to Chicago for the funeral, Claire assumes that Catherine doesn’t have the wherewithal to think about practicalities like buying clothes or grocery shopping. To Claire, wallowing in the past is anathema, and after Robert’s death, she is anxious to sell the house and convince Catherine to move to New York. At the end of the play, Catherine hurts her feelings, and she shows that she is not as brusque or unemotional as she has pretended.
