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John Nash 's A Beautiful Mind

Decent Essays

A Beautiful Mind is a film about the life of mathematician, John Nash. This film is a window into the world of mental illness, exploring the schizophrenic life of John Nash. This film shows the underlying conflicts that his psychosis displays between personal relationships, being apart of humanity and pursuing his original idea. In this essay, I will explore the struggles that John Nash faces in the pursuit of his dream, creating an original idea. I will focus on the demands of psychological pressures that weigh on John’s social world, creating and perfecting his original idea, as well as looking at the effects on his relationships particularly with his wife, Alicia. In the beginning, John is unaware of the psychological world that …show more content…

The pressure and stress John feels from his code breaking and relationships, actually influences his schizophrenia to worsen and build momentum. He begins to have more intense hallucinations about code breaking for a man named, William Parcher. William Parcher only shows up in moments of great stress. Again, John is unable to see that William Parcher is only a figment of his imagination but to him, Parcher is incredibly intimidating and forceful. When Alicia becomes pregnant, John realizes that he needs to stop code breaking from Parcher. John builds up the courage to actually tell Parcher that he is done code breaking, as if he has some sort of innate knowledge of his condition. However, Parcher’s forceful manner coerced him back into his ‘code breaking’ work. When John’s family and friends become aware of John’s condition they try and find ways to help him but it’s impossible to force John to snap out of his psychosis. John feels invested in these delusions and they feel too real to shake, to John, his hallucinations of Parcher, Charles and Marcie feel overwhelmingly real. He struggles to differentiate what is real and what is provoked by his schizophrenia. To his wife and friends, it’s easy for them to compartmentalize that these are figments of his imagination. To John, these characters have been integral part of his life and in a way they’ve each individually given his a

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