John Charles Martin Nash (Johnny) Character Analysis

John Charles Martin Nash, known as “Johnny,” is the son of John Nash and Alicia Larde, born in 1959. Though Johnny has a more stable childhood than his half-brother, John David Stier, and is an “excellent student” as a teenager, he begins to experience delusions and hear voices during high school. He is eventually hospitalized at the Carrier Clinic, where his father had also been hospitalized and, like his father, is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Despite Johnny’s mental illness, he demonstrates remarkable talents in math (also like his father), and completes a PhD in the subject at Rutgers University. However, he is never well enough to live on his own. At the time that A Beautiful Mind is published, Johnny, Alicia, and Nash are living together in Princeton. Throughout A Beautiful Mind, Nash expresses guilt at the fact that his son suffers from the same illness as him, and he describes his experiences with Johnny as both heart-wrenching and rewarding, as life with Johnny both “draws Nash and Alicia together and tears them apart.”