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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Proof, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Genius and Mental Instability
Family and Heredity
Sexism
Proof, Trust, and Credibility
Caretaking and Sacrifice
Summary
Analysis
Exhausted, Catherine sits in a chair on the back porch of a house in Chicago. Her father, Robert, stands behind her, but she doesn’t realize that he is there. It’s nighttime, and both she and her father are rather messily dressed. Suddenly, he asks Catherine if she can’t sleep, startling her.
Catherine’s exhaustion and her haphazard outfit suggest that she is going through a hard time. Robert is also messily dressed, which may suggest that he also doesn’t have the time or energy to care about what he’s wearing. The fact that Catherine and Robert are alike in their haphazard dress may suggest that the two characters are similar to each other in some unspecified way, but, at this point, the audience doesn’t know what this similarity would be.
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When Catherine asks Robert why he’s there, he says he’s “check[ing] up” on her. Catherine is waiting for his student, who’s upstairs in Robert’s office, to leave. Robert reminds Catherine that the man is no longer his student, but a teacher in his own right.
In this passage, Catherine comes off as a bit confused. She’s clearly surprised by Robert’s presence, which may suggest that he’s not supposed to be on the porch at all, or it may mean that he should be asleep (it’s late at night). She also mistakenly identifies the man in the house as her father’s student (he’s actually a teacher now), which may indicate that she’s not up to date with what’s going on around her. In general, Catherine seems to be out of sorts. Catherine’s confusion establishes an atmosphere of uncertainty, making the audience feel unsure of what’s going on.
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Since it is past midnight, Robert gestures toward a bottle of champagne while wishing Catherine a happy birthday. As she pops open the bottle, she says that she feels old—she’s twenty-five years old. Robert forgot to bring glasses, so Catherine takes a swig from the bottle then pronounces the wine disgusting. Not insulted, Robert says that he’s proud to not be a wine snob, as he finds “those kind of people” to be annoying. Catherine offers Robert some of the wine, but he declines.
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Robert asks Catherine what she will be doing on her birthday, and she says that she’ll be drinking the wine he purchased. He asks whether her friends will celebrate with her, but Catherine tells him no; she doesn’t have any friends. When Robert brings up an old friend of hers, Catherine exclaims that the girl, Cindy Jacobson, was her friend in the third grade. Robert asks about Claire, which Catherine dismisses. Claire doesn’t count because she is Catherine’s sister, whom Catherine doesn’t even like.
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Confused, Robert says that he thought that Claire was coming. But Catherine explains that Claire is arriving the next day. After a moment, Robert advises Catherine to do some math, as that’s what helps him when he’s up late. But Catherine refuses and instead offers him some wine, which he declines again. He reminds Catherine of her talent—she “knew what a prime number was before [she] could read”—and tells her that, while she is going through a rough time, she shouldn’t be lazy.
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Catherine insists that she’s not lazy—she’s been busy taking care of Robert. But Robert enumerates her bad habits: she sleeps late, eats poorly, doesn’t work, doesn’t clean, and rarely gets out of bed. Catherine makes a joke, but Robert won’t let it go, bluntly telling her that she has wasted many days, which means that she’s also lost any groundbreaking ideas that she could have had during that time.
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When Catherine admits that she has “lost a few days,” Robert sharply asks how many—he knows that she counts them. Catherine claims not to keep track, but Robert keeps pushing, and she finally admits that she’s lost 33 days plus a chunk of today, which is a “depressing […] number.”
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But Robert says that if each day were a year, the number would be quite interesting. Catherine reluctantly acknowledges that it would be 1729 weeks, which is “The smallest number expressible […] as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.” Delighted, Robert proclaims that “Even [her] depression is mathematical,” taking it as a sign of her potential.
Catherine feels that she hasn’t “done anything good,” particularly in comparison to Robert, who was already famous when he was her age. He confirms that by 25, he’d already done his best work. After a pause, Catherine reminds him that he couldn’t work after he got sick. But Robert insists that he was at his sharpest then, which makes Catherine laugh.
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Robert felt an amazing clarity after getting sick, and Catherine asks whether he was happy then. He says yes—he was “busy.” Catherine points out that busy and happy aren’t the same, but Robert “[doesn’t] see the difference.” He would work all day and find “secrets, complex and tantalizing messages” all around him.
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Catherine abruptly asks when “it” started. As Robert explains that he was in his mid-twenties, he realizes that this is what Catherine may be dreading this year; she’s afraid to go “bughouse” like he did. But he says that there are lots of factors beyond heredity—just because he got sick doesn’t mean she will.
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Robert reassures Catherine that she’s just going through a rough spot and, if she just “get[s] the machinery going” again, everything will be fine. He adds that the mere fact that she is talking to him about this is a good sign, since “Crazy people don’t sit around wondering if they’re nuts”—and he would know.
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Catherine seems to believe Robert, but then she interrupts him: his argument doesn’t make sense. He just called himself “crazy,” even though he also said that “a crazy person would never admit that.” Robert replies that he can only admit it because he’s dead, which Catherine confirms: he died from heart failure a week ago, and Claire is coming to Chicago for the funeral. Catherine asks what it means for her that she’s talking with her dead father, and Robert replies that it might be a bad sign.
Hal enters the room, startling Catherine. As he apologizes for staying so late, Robert disappears. Noticing Catherine’s champagne bottle, Hal asks whether she is drinking alone. She says yes and offers him the bottle, but he says he needs to drive. When he asks if he can come back tomorrow, Catherine reminds him about the funeral. Apologetic, Hal asks whether he can come Sunday.
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Incredulous, Catherine asks how much more time Hal needs; he has already had three days. But Hal says he’ll need at least another week to go through everything in the office. So far, he’s been sorting the notebooks—Robert dated them all. But when Hal suggests that he bring the books home, Catherine refuses. According to her, he’s just wasting his time, as the books contain nothing but nonsense—Robert was a graphomaniac, which means he wrote compulsively. But Hal insists that someone has to look through all 103 notebooks that Robert left behind to make sure that there isn’t anything genius.
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Hal tells Catherine that he has to go see some friends from the math department play in a band. Their songs are math jokes, including one called “i,” or “Imaginary Number,” where they stand silent, not playing anything. Catherine calls them nerds, and Hal agrees, but he adds that they are nevertheless cool: they are professionally successful, socially adept, and sexually active. Catherine snidely guesses that he’s in the band, which he admits.
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When Hal invites Catherine to come with him, she refuses. He suggests another day, but she rudely reminds him that he has a job and band practice, so he must be busy. Hal admits that he doesn’t have much time, but he wants to take her out. After a pause, he says that he loved her father, who helped Hal through a rough spot during his Ph.D. program. That was a few years back, during a “lucid year” that Robert had. Hal adds that if he could do even a fraction of the work Robert did, he could have a job at any math department.
Catherine abruptly demands to see Hal’s backpack, but Hal insists that he wouldn’t take anything out of the house like Catherine suspects. Still, she accuses Hal of taking notebooks from Robert’s office in hopes of stealing Robert’s work to advance his own career. Hal swears this isn’t true, but she doesn’t believe him.
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Hal tells Catherine to calm down, that she’s being paranoid—after all, she herself just said that the notebooks were all gibberish anyway, so what would he steal? Catherine agrees and says that Hal has no reason to come back, since he agrees that the notebooks are worthless. Exasperated, Hal insists that someone needs to make sure.
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Catherine interrupts, saying that she lived with Robert—since her mom died, she’s the one who had to watch him descend into madness. He talked to invisible people, neglected his hygiene, and believed that aliens were sending him messages through the Dewey decimal numbers on library books. When he started writing dozens of hours a day, Catherine had to drop out of school. She tells Hal that she is glad that her father is dead.
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Hal tries to empathize, but Catherine curses at him and insists that he doesn’t know her. She just wants to be alone. Hal argues that he won’t be the only protégé who will come around—people are already looking over Robert’s old work and they will definitely want to know what’s in the notebooks.
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Suddenly, Catherine says that she will be the one to look through the books; Robert was her father, after all. But Hal says she doesn’t have the skills required to determine what isn’t nonsense. When Catherine insists that she does, Hal says that she only knows whatever basic math Robert taught her, which won’t be enough to decipher her father’s work—it would take a professional.
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Catherine suddenly snatches Hal’s backpack and rifles through it. But there’s no notebook there, only various personal items. Embarrassed, Catherine tells Hal that he can come tomorrow. After a brief pause, Hal advises Catherine to go see a doctor or get into exercise, both of which helped him after his mother’s death. Hal invites her one last time to the show, but she refuses.
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As Hal gets up to leave, Catherine realizes that he has forgotten his jacket. But when she picks it up, a notebook falls out. “I’m paranoid?” she says to Hal before yelling at him to get out of her house. He insists that he wants to explain something, but she dials the police. As she tells the police that there’s a robbery in progress, Hal tries to say that he borrowed the notebook not because of any math, but because of something Robert wrote about Catherine. As he starts to read, Catherine hangs up the phone.
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Robert wrote that it was “a good day,” since Catherine had some good news—Hal doesn’t know what this refers to, but he thought Catherine might. Catherine asks when Robert wrote this, and Hal speculates that it was during his remission—Robert also wrote that while the “Machinery is not working yet,” he can be patient. Hal clarifies that “The machinery” is what Robert called “his ability to do mathematics,” Catherine brusquely says she already knows.
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In the rest of the entry, Robert writes that he feels better when talking to students and doing “all the activities of ‘normal’ life,” like going out to restaurants and going outside. He also expresses gratitude for Catherine’s aid and sacrifice, acknowledging that he wouldn’t be improving if she hadn’t chosen to take care of him at home. Robert plans to take Catherine out to dinner that night for her birthday. Hal remarks that the entry is dated September 4, which is the same day as today.
Hal hands Catherine the notebook, acknowledging that he shouldn’t have tried to “sneak it out,” even if his intentions were honorable. He wanted to wrap it for her and give it back as a birthday gift, which he now thinks was a stupid idea. He wishes her a happy birthday and then leaves. Catherine sobs for a moment, but she stops and curses when a police siren wails.
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