Thursday, June 13, 2013

What stressor precipitated John Nash's first episode of schizophrenia in "A Beautiful Mind"?

John Nash had long been considered to be eccentric, but it was not until he was thirty years old that he suffered his "first shattering episode of paranoid schizophrenia" (Prologue).  In the summer of 1957, Nash began work on a project to "revise quantum theory".  Decades later, Nash would blame this attempt to "resolve the contradictions in quantum theory", as the stressor that precipitated his mental illness.  He called his efforts to explore the depth of the science "possibly overreaching and psychologically destabilizing" (Chapter 30).

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In Act III, scene 2, why may the establishment of Claudius's guilt be considered the crisis of the revenge plot?

The crisis of a drama usually proceeds and leads to the climax.  In Shakespeare's Hamlet , the proof that Claudius is guilty...