Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya"

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

ONE YEAR, GUYS.

One whole

Huge

Crazy

Intense

Inspiring

YEAR!

I started this blog so that I could make content -- to explore new plays as well as reach out to those who wanted to do the same. And that’s exactly what has happened. I have never solicited this blog in any way -- never mentioned it to the masses on Facebook or bought Google AdWords, but already we have over 3,500 views and counting. That’s more than almost anything I’ve ever made.

It’s almost like being famous.

So thank you.

ANYWAY. Enough of that.

(Feelings? Gross.)

This week we’re celebrating the anniversary of the blog by revisiting the playwright we started with: Chekhov, in another of his brilliant works.

UNCLE VANYA

by Anton Chekhov

Like most Chekhov this one is a little hard to explain.

I think the best way to do it is to start with what IS at the top of the play:

Vanya’s been supporting Alexander Serebraikov (hereafter called The Professor), his dead sister’s husband, for years. He breaks his back and wastes his youth to provide The Professor a living in Moscow. At the top of the play The Professor has come to live on Vanya’s plantation, and what Vanya has learned is that the man he has been giving his life to support was never the shooting star he thought he was: The Professor is in disgrace with the academic community. On top of this, Vanya is desperately in love with The Professor’s young, beautiful second wife, Yelena, making him extremely jealous of the sick man (The Professor has gout). The Professor’s gout draws Doctor Astrov to the plantation. Doctor Astrov is a handsome, overworked county doctor quickly enchanted by Yelena. The Professor’s plain daughter, Sonya, who is in love with Astrov and already resentful of her stepmother because of their proximity in age, carries her resentment for Yelena openly at the start of the play. Also present on the plantation is Vanya’s mother, Mrs. Voinitsky, who still adores The Professor; Marina, the family’s old nurse; and Telegin, a poor neighbor.

That’s where we begin.

Then… they talk. Vanya confesses his love to Yelena (again); she rejects him. He rails against The Professor. Astrov comes to visit, and drinks and complains about how busy he is. Sonya and Yelena make up over Sonya’s love for Astrov, and Yelena realizes she’s enchanted with him, too. Sonya pleads for Yelena to ask Astrov if he loves her, and if he doesn’t, to ask him to please leave. Yelena does so (he doesn’t love Sonya), but really ends up telling him that she loves him. He asks her to run away with him and kisses her (Vanya sees) and it’s way more than she bargained for. The Professor announces to everyone that he has a great plan -- sell the estate and live off the profits! Vanya, enraged, tries to shoot The Professor. The Professor and Yelena decide to leave. They do, it’s tearful goodbyes -- Astrov begs Yelena to come with him, she says no. The Professor and Vanya make up, with Vanya agreeing to go back to supporting The Professor the way he always has. The couple leaves. Then Astrov leaves as well, making Sonya miserable because she knows he’ll never be back. Sonya, Vanya, and Marina are left onstage, proclaiming that the only way to combat their misery is to work. Sonya consoles Uncle Vanya by reminding him of the promise of eternal rest, and the play ends.

Comedy, guys.

Comedy.

(No, but seriously, Chekhov wanted all productions of his plays to be hilarious.)

Anyway.

Today we are looking at

YELENA

In this monologue, Sonya has just left the room after asking Yelena to please ask Astrov if he loves her. He doesn’t, and Yelena knows this. At the top of this monologue, Yelena has no idea that she loves Astrov, but by the time she’s sympathized with Sonya, she’s realized just what she’s missing out on. The two things characters in this play say about Yelena is that she’s bored, and she’s beautiful. I (personally) think this is true, but she’s frustrated with both, in a way. Something to think about.

Sidebar: Uncle Vanya’s words to Yelena are: “My darling, my heart’s delight, use your imagination! You’ve got mermaid’s blood in your veins, so be a mermaid! Let yourself go at least once in your life, fall head over heels in love with a merman, dive in with a big splash, and leave the Herr Professor and the rest of us standing on the shore, helplessly waving our arms!”

YELENA:  (Alone.) There is nothing worse than knowing someone else’s secret when you can’t help them. He's obviously not in love with her, but why shouldn't he marry her? She's not pretty, but she's so clever and pure and good, she would make a splendid wife for a country doctor of his years...  No, that’s not the point, it’s not the point.

[A pause] I can understand how the poor child feels. She lives here in this desperate loneliness with no one around her except these colourless shadows that go mooning about talking nonsense and knowing nothing except that they eat, drink, and sleep. Among them appears from time to time this Dr. Astrov, so different, so handsome, so interesting, so charming. It's like seeing the moon rise on a dark night. Oh, to surrender oneself to his embrace! To lose oneself in his arms! I'm a little in love with him myself! Yes, I'm lonely without him, and when I think of him I smile. That Uncle Vanya says I have the blood of a mermaid in my veins: "Give free rein to your nature for once in your life!" Perhaps it's right that I should. Oh, to be free as a bird, to fly away from all your sleepy faces and your talk and forget that you have existed at all! But I'm a coward, I'm afraid; my conscience torments me. He comes here every day now. I can guess why, and feel guilty already; I should like to fall on my knees at Sonya's feet and beg her forgiveness, and to cry.

This play also has a couple other truly spectacular monologues. That final monologue of Sonya’s is one of the most famous in the western canon, but Sonya also has an excellent soliloquy about what it’s like to be plain. And Yelena has at least one other truly excellent monologue as well. So check those out!

As always,

Buy

READ

And post back!

Thanks guys!

Again, it’s been amazing to have had a full year with you.

This has been

SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and again,

I’M SHANNON

ENJOY!

"Saint Joan" by Bernard Shaw

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

So you may not know this,

but I have a BA in History.

(I know, random, right?)

Therefore:

I love doing history pieces (inaccurate though they often are).

This week’s play is by Bernard Shaw, who we’ve seen before for Heartbreak House, writing one of History’s greatest, most notable women. Joan of Arc. She was 17, schizophrenic, and led France to victory during the Hundred Years’ War. This in 1429, when women weren’t allowed to own property, much less lead an army. She was (rather famously) burned at the stake in 1431, and later canonized by the Catholic Church. What a woman! Now, there’s something interesting to consider here: Shaw is English. Joan of Arc led the French to defeat England at this point in the war, and therefore by English playwrights is often (literally) demonized. Shakespeare does this when writing her in Henry VI Part I. Shaw refrains from it, and paints a very sympathetic Joan in this play. But he’s still writing from an English perspective, so in performance, adding… insanity? to her might not be uncalled for. Just something to think about.

SAINT JOAN

By Bernard Shaw

#herstory, ammirite?

We enter the play in 1429 with Captain Robert de Baudrincourt, a swaggering squire. His chickens are not laying eggs, and Baudrincourt’s oft-berated servant claims that the cause is a local maid who has taken up at Baudrincourt’s door and won’t be turned away. Already the soldiers are loyal to her. Baudrincourt demands to see her, and Joan enters, young and docile, asking for an escort of three soldiers and a horse to get to Charles, the defeated Dauphin. Her voices have told her that God has commanded her to help Charles drive the English from France. Eventually, Robert gives in. The scene skips to the Archbishop and the rest of the court, arranging a deception for Joan -- she’ll have to spot Charles, even though he’s swapping places with one of his nobles. She does so easily, and the population and Charles are convinced that it is a miracle, giving the reluctant prince the courage (with God) to go to war. He sends Joan to Orleans, and the west wind that had been plaguing the French for months suddenly disappears upon her arrival, earning her a loyal friend in Dunois, Charles’s general. But pride begins to overtake Joan, and as she crowns Charles at Rheims and gains power through her popularity and visions, the members of the court begin to turn against her, most specifically the Archbishop, who vows against her as she demands more battles. She is captured by the English, who try her for heresy after debating the nature of it. She is brought to court, and under the pain of their torture, agrees to sign a confession admitting that her voices are of her own invention. When she learns of the prison sentence still in store for her, she accepts death at the stake in favor of it. They sentence her to burn at the stake and follow her offstage. Warwick reenters alone, and is soon met by the repentant Chaplain and Lavenau, who bear witness to Joan’s generosity, even as she was burning. The final scene is 25 years later, on the night that Joan has been cleared of the charges that burned her, as King Charles (now the Victorious) dreams that Joan and many of the others appear to him, asking Joan for forgiveness. She forgives them one by one, and they are joined from a priest from the 1920s, who announces Joan’s canonization. Joan recognizes that saints can work miracles, and offers to rise from the dead. All characters in the room, including Charles, despising having professed to love her, ask her to remain dead. Joan’s final words are “...”

We are looking at the only woman in this play:

JOAN

Joan actually has two great speeches in this play, one at the end of Scene 5, and this one. This is the final scene. Joan has surrendered the only thing she has left -- the truth of the voices she believes comes from God. Tortured to the edge of sanity, she has finally admitted to preserve herself that the voices are of her own invention, that she lied about being led by God, and that her preference of dress, hair, and warlike spirit are sins. She has given up everything, signed listlessly away. And then they condemn her to perpetual imprisonment: “the sorrow of bread and the affliction of water”. She tears up her confession, and says:

JOAN: Light your fire: do you think I dread it as much as the life of a rat in a hole? My voices were right. Yes: they told me you were fools (the word gives great offence) and I was not to listen to your fine words, or trust in your charity. You promised me my life, but you lied (indignant exclamations). You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear. I can live on bread, when have I asked for more? It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. Bread is no sorrow, water no affliction. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers, to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers or climb the hills, to make me breathe foul, damp darkness and keep from me everything that brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me to hate him. All this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times. I could do without my warhorse, I could drag about in a skirt, I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and the soldiers pass me by and leave me behind like they leave the other women if only I could hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young calves crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed, blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind. I cannot live without these, and by your wanting to take them from me, from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil, and mine is of God.

Powerful. I'm so into it.

And there you have it! Enjoy! As always, read the play (you can get the .pdf of it online!) and post your version!

Once again, this has been
SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and

I’M SHANNON.

ENJOY!

Game of Love and Chance, by Marivaux

HI.

IT’S SHANNON.

This is a very old and virtually unknown play (by anyone who doesn’t have a BFA in Theatre Studies). Marivaux, a contemporary of Moliere in early 18th-century France, was one of the first writers to give the upper classes and lower classes equal say onstage. The France he was writing from was only 50 years from its famous revolution, and several of Marivaux’s plays were outlawed because of increasing social tension. But they’re funny, farcical, and short, so there’s no reason we can’t include them on this blo. They make a very good “Oooooh, you’re doing that?” When an auditioner asks you for a Classical monologue (because really, who hasn’t seen a hundred Rosalinds?).

Without further ado,

I announce

Le Jeu De L'Amour et du Hasard

(The Game of Love and Chance)

By Pierre de Marivaux

The story tells of Sylvia, the high-born daughter of Orgon, who is betrothed to Dorante, a noble whose father Orgon knows well. Sylvia has never met Dorante, and prior to meeting him is nervous about what kind of man he is. With her father’s blessing, she decides to trick Dorante by switching places with her maid Lisette. Little does she know that Dorante, equally nervous, has decided to do the same thing and has switched places with his valet, Harlequin. The two nobles hit it off right away and immediately fall in love with each other. The two servants, playacting the part of noble, fall for each other, as well. But everyone is torn with the impossibility of their predicament! They each know that they’re not the class they’re pretending to be, but at the same time, can’t stand the person who they *think* is of the same class they are. Orgon, knowing both sides of the story, is highly amused. Finally, Dorante confesses to Sylvia (dressed as Lisette), that he is noble and therefore must fight the love he has. Sylvia, thrilled with the knowledge that the man she loves is in fact her betrothed, plots to make him marry her despite thinking she’s a servant, and involves her brother Mario to make Dorante jealous. Her plot works, and as soon as he proposes she confesses her true status to him. Both couples, happy in their respective pairings, dance offstage.

It’s a cute little farce, and Sylvia and Lisette both have brilliant monologues throughout the play. In fact, everyone talks quite a bit, and quite grandly to boot. Very fun.

This week we’ll be looking at

LISETTE

In this scene, she is talking to Dorante, who she thinks is Harlequin’s valet by the name of Bourguingnon (Borgin-yon). She has asked him what he thinks of his master, and Dorante (as Bourguingnon), while doing his best not to speak ill of his own name, tries to justify Harlequin’s behavior by citing that the ‘true’ Dorante is “a very different person.” Lisette, who has been entirely charmed by Harlequin’s verbosity and forthrightness, is offended on his behalf:

LISETTE: Disheartened? I’m not at all disheartened! How dare you speak this way of your master! I have found him to be much more discreet, more modest, and blessedly more down to earth than I expected, and have no reason whatsoever to complain of him! What is more, although I was at first surprised by his high spirits and although I  have learned today that men present to the world quite a different face from the one they wear in private, I am absolutely certain that that man, whoever he is, is very much himself! Furthermore, I like him, and would consider myself very fortunate indeed if, at the end of the day, he found it in his heart to ask for my hand. You may not think he is a gentleman, but I do, and I will thank you to take your divisive remarks back below stairs where they belong. I know what servants are, better than you might suppose, but I have never seen one quite like you! I had heard that you had spoken disparagingly about your master, and now I see that it is true!

DORANTE: I have never spoken disparagingly about Monsieur Durante!

LISETTE: Ha! It is obvious that you have a low opinion of him!

DORANTE: (Suppressing his anger) Madame, I wrongly sensed that you were concerned, when you asked me to tell you about him.And so I was attempting to do so candidly.

LISETTE: I think you were attempting to do something else entirely. There is something very presumptuous about the way you look at me. I don’t trust you. Bourguingnon. I don’t trust you, and I don’t like you.

All of this should be delivered with top working-class pizazz and sass. Lisette is a recurring character throughout Marivaux’s plays (as the sassy maid, basically) and always has lots of comedic relief and attitude to provide to the play. So have fun!

And as always,

Buy, Read, Post!

This has been

SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and again,

I’M SHANNON

ENJOY!

Proof, by David Auburn

HI.

IT'S SHANNON.

This is a very smart, moving play made into a movie in 2005 starring Gweneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, and Jake Gyllenhal. I'm not 100% in love with the casting of the movie, but the play itself has some very well-written scenes and excellently characterized arguments. A teacher I had once told me that fight scenes are all about characters trying NOT to fight -- just like crying onscreen is about trying NOT to cry and playing drunk is about trying to sober up. It's the conflict of resisting the impulse that makes a character compelling, and this play has some brilliant scenes which flourish by merit of that struggle.

PROOF

By David Auburn

Proof tells the story of Catherine, the brilliant, math-minded daughter of an even more brilliant mathematician (Robert). Her father's brilliance dissolved into lunacy not long after a mathematical discovery that made him famous. Catherine was left to care for him, quitting school and living in their Chicago home while her sister Claire moved to New York and got a job to fund their father's care. At the onset of the play, Robert has died. Hal, one of Robert's students in later years, is at the house, going through the graphomaniacal scrawls Robert wrote in in a series of notebooks. He asks her out, but an argument ensues. The next day is the funeral, and Claire, Catherine's sister, has come in from New York to take control. At the funeral, Hal and Catherine hook up, and he spends the night. She gives him a key to a specific drawer in her father's study. The next morning a hungover Claire breaks the bad news: She is sure she knows best and suspects that Catherine, who inherited Robert's genius, might have inherited some of his tendencies towards insanity as well. She urges Catherine to return to New York with her, and confesses that she's already sold their father's house. Catherine (understandably), is furious. Hal comes out, amazed and bearing a notebook -- the proof in the notebook is a mathematical discovery beyond belief. Catherine reveals: she wrote it. Claire and Hal refuse to believe her -- it doesn't end well. The next day, Claire rebukes Hal for his behavior towards Catherine, but urges him to take the notebook and investigate it at the University. The following morning, Catherine prepares to leave with Claire to go to New York -- she is resigned and has no choice.  Hal comes to see her off, and asks him to please, please explain the proof to him. She accepts, and the play ends.

We will be looking at

CATHERINE

(Claire’s also a great part)

This scene happens at the beginning of the play, during Hal and Catherine’s first fight, and he’s asking to continue to come back and go through her father’s notebooks, claiming that someone needs to know whether or not Robert was actually insane, or whether there’s genius in one of the books that could be published.

HAL: Please. Someone should know for sure whether ---

CATHERINE: I LIVED WITH HIM. I spent my life with him. I fed him. Talked to him. Tried to listen when he talked. Talked to people who weren’t there… Watched him shuffling around like a ghost. A very smelly ghost. He was filthy. I had to make sure he bathed. My own father.

HAL: I’m so sorry I shouldn’t have…

CATHERINE: After my mother died it was just me here. I tried to keep him happy no matter what idiotic project he was doing. He used to read all day. He kept demanding more and more books. I took them out of the library by the carload. We had hundreds upstairs. Then I realized he wasn’t reading: he believed aliens were sending him messages through the dewey decimal numbers on the library books. He was trying to work out the code.

HAL: What kind of messages?

CATHERINE: Beautiful mathematics. Answers to everything. The most elegant proofs, perfect proofs, proofs like music.

HAL: Sounds good.

CATHERINE: Plus fashion tips, knock-knock jokes -- I mean it was NUTS, okay?

HAL: He was ill. It was a tragedy.

CATHERINE: Later the writing phase: scribbling, nineteen, twenty hours a day… I ordered him a case of notebooks and he used every one.

I dropped out of school… I’m glad he’s dead.

HAL: I understand why you’d feel that way.

CATHERINE: Fuck you.

The last line of this monologue is optional, but since so much of it is directed at someone not in the scene, I thought it would be good to kind of clue back into Hal as your scene partner at the last moment. Take it or leave it. :)

As always,

Buy, Read, Post!

This has been

SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and again,

I’M SHANNON

ENJOY!

Fool for Love, by Sam Shepard

FOOL FOR LOVE

By Sam Shepard

This play is to be performed relentlessly without a break.

Brace yourself for Sam Shepard.  His plays are crazy, physical, slightly confusing bundles of emotion.  From “Buried Child” which just finished an Off-Broadway run, to “Fool for Love,” which was recently on Broadway, and which we will be looking at today.

Like all Sam Shepard plays, physicality is one of the most, if not most important element of storytelling.  Do not cross out or ignore the stage directions.  You will be completely lost.

In the introduction to the Seven Plays collection by Batnam Books, Ross Wetzsteon gives “four ways in which his theatre has transformed the rigid categories of naturalism in order to achieve a kind of hyperrealism.”

1. Space is emotional rather than physical.
2. Tim is immediate rather than sequential.
3. Narrative is a matter of consciousness rather than behavior.
4. Character is spontaneous rather than coherent.

To me, it is easiest to think of a Sam Shepard play as a nightmare- stakes are incredibly high, everything seems incredibly read and immediate, and none of it quite makes sense.  But, it’s terrifying nonetheless.

Today we are looking at

MAY

When we first see May we see her on the bed “feet on floor, legs apart, elbows on knees, hands hanging limp and crossed between her knees, head hanging forward, face staring at floor.  She is absolutely still and maintains this attitude until she speaks.”

Her half-brother, her love, is back.  Again.  Her half-brother, who she didn’t know was her half-brother until they were way  too deeply in love.  Their dad fell in love with two women and split his life in half to have a life with both- he’d spend months with one, then leave without a trace to spend months with the other.  

Eddie,, the half-brother, takes after their dad.  He’s in love with May, he can’t help himself, but he leaves for months with other women, but always comes back to May.  This time he was off with “The Countess.”  He comes back to try to get May to run away with him.

But this time, she doesn’t fall for him.  She’s done.  Except it’s never that easy.  She can’t quite say no.  She says no multiple times, but the more he insists, the more she waivers.  She has an out this time though- a man, a date, named Marty, who’s coming over to take her to the movies.  When he shows up, and May leaves them alone together, Eddie insists on telling him a story- the story of their dad and his mom.  May overhears this, and finishes the story- telling how she and her mom tracked down the dad, and finally found him- it broke her mom’s heart.  But May didn’t even care- she was in love with Eddie.

This monologue comes from various points in the play, all before Martin enters.  May and Eddie play a constant game of cat and mouse, and we are never quite sure which one is which.

I don't understand my feelings. I really don't. I don't understand how I can hate you so much after so much time. How, no matter how much I'd like not to hate you, I hate you even more. It grows. I can't even see you now. All I see is a picture of you. You and her. I don't even know if the picture's real anymore. I don't even care. It's a made up picture. It invades my head. The two of you. And this picture stings even more than if I'd actually seen you with her. It cuts me. It cuts me so deep I'll never get over it. And I can't get rid of this picture either. It just comes. Uninvited. Kinda' like a little torture. And I blame you more for this little torture than I do for what you did.

You can't keep messing around like this. It's been going on too long. I can't take it anymore. I get sick every time you come around. Then I get sick when you leave. You're like a disease to me. Besides, you got no right being jealous of me after all the bullshit I've been through with you.

Okay. Look. I don't understand what you've got in your head anymore. I really don't. I don't get it. Now you desperately need me. Now you can't live without me. NOW you'll do anything for me. Why should I believe it this time?

It was supposed to have been true every time before. Every other time. Now it's true again. You've been jerking me off like this for fifteen years. Fifteen years I've been a yo-yo for you. I've never been split. I've never been two ways about you. I've either loved you or not loved you. And now I just plain don't love you. Understand? Do you understand that? I don't love you. I don't need you. I don't want you. Do you get that? Now if you can still stay, then you're either crazy or pathetic.

The Whale by Samuel D. Hunter

I’ve done something VERY unconventional here- I’ve created a monologue from lines in different parts of the play.  I’m talking different scenes, different acts, dozens of pages apart.  So, if you think that’s a terrible idea, feel free to skip on over to the next post.  But, if you’re going to stick around, I bring you

THE WHALE

By Samuel D. Hunter

The play takes place over the course of five days.  It follows Charlie, a morbidly obese (we’re talking 600 lbs), very close to death, gay man.  He’s a teacher- when we meet him on Monday, he finishes the class, turns on some gay porn, and begins to masterbate.  He begins to have trouble breathing- he’s panicking and he can’t stand up.  The porn won’t stop playing.

Enter Elder Thomas, a Mormon missionary.  He immediately wants to call an ambulance.  Instead, Charlie makes him read aloud an essay.  We learn later that the essay was written by his daughter, Ellie, when she was in 8th grade.  Charlie hasn’t seen his daughter in fifteen years.  His marriage ended in divorce- his wife, Mary, fought hard for custody and won..

Charlie and Alan, his lover, were both Mormon, and began seeing each other against their parents wishes.  Alan was so troubled by this that he would hyperventilate every time they drove past the church.  One day, his dad asked him to please come to the church that day- he had written a sermon just for him.  Alan came out of the church a broken man.  He stopped eating completely.  He was taken care of only by Charlie, and his sister Liz, who discovered his body.

Liz has been Charlie’s nurse.  Throughout the play she yells at him, fusses at him, nags at him- she’s the first to tell him he has to go to the hospital. He refuses.  It’s not until the end that Liz completely loses it, because Charlie is doing the same thing Alan did, and there is nothing she can do about it.

At the end of the play, we finally learn about the sermon that caused Alan to break down and literally starve himself to death.  The sermon was about Jonah and the whale- a story about a man who turned his back on God.

If you want to see how this is all revealed- please check out the play.  For now, I’m going to switch gears and focus on Charlie’s daughter-

ELLIE

She shows up at the beginning of the week to see her father for the first time since she was two.  She is cruel… at best.

Charlie wants to know why she isn’t at school.  Turns out, she’s suspended- “I blogged about my stupid bitch lab partner.  She told her stupid bitch mom and the vice principal said it was “vaguely threatening.”  Ellie has a blog, a “trash site” where she posts pictures of her friends and her mom and insults them.  It’s like a blog, but the only thing she ever talks about is how much she doesn’t like people.  She’s failing.  Personally, socially and academically.  

Charlie wants to help.  First, he offers to help her pass her classes.  Then he offers to pay her to spend time with him.  One hundred and twenty thousand dollars to be exact.  Everything he has.  She quickly agrees.

Later on, Ellie meets Elder Thomas.  She’s horrible to him (like she is to everyone), but he sticks around.  Whether he feels a genuine connection, is intrigued by her cruelty, or thinks he can help her is anyone’s guess.  She hates him,, but she sticks around because “everyone else I know is even less attractive, interesting, and intelligent than you.”

She gets him to smoke pot.   He takes a hit, she takes a picture.

Later on, there’s a huge confrontation between Charlie, Liz, Ellie, and her mom (Mary.)  Mary knows immediately that Charlie’s promised Ellie all of his money.  It turns out, Charlie has put almost all of his earnings from teaching into a savings account for Ellie.  Liz had no idea.  She’s been doing his shopping from a bank account which holds less than seven hundred dollars.  She’s furious- they could have afforded all the medical care he needed, but he still refuses to even go to the hospital.  As the fight concludes, everyone exits, leaving Charlie and Mary alone for the first time in fifteen years.  They talk about Ellie- Mary says that she’s an evil girl.  Charlie thinks that getting to know her has been amazing.  She has a “strong personality” he says.  In this scene we learn why Charlie is so intent on helping Ellie in some way- “I need to know I did one thing right in my life.”

Next, we learn that Ellie posted the pictures she took of Elder Thomas smoking pot- she told his parents where he was.  “And my parents saw the pictures, and they called the church here in town, and they told them where I was staying, and I can’t figure out whether she was trying to help me or hurt me… I thought my parents were going to disown me, and you know what they said?  They said they loved me, they cared about me,and they wanted me to come home.”  Charlie believes that Ellie was trying to help him.  He has to believe it.  “Do you ever get that feeling? He says to Liz, “that people are incapable of not caring?”  I believe that is the key to Ellie.

THE AMBULANCE IS COMING THEY’LL TAKE YOU TO THE HOSPITAL  YOU SHOULD HAVE GONE AWHILE AGO

I FAILED  ARE YOU JUST TRYING TO SCREW ME OVER ONE LAST TIME BEFORE YOU DIE  I DON’T CARE THAT YOU’RE DYING  I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU  DO YOU WANT ME TO FAIL OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL  IS THAT WHY YOU DID THIS

YOU’RE JUST LIKE MY IDIOT TEACHERS YOU THINK BECAUSE I DON’T GO NUTS OVER SOME STUPID LITTLE POEM IT’S BECAUSE I’M TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND IT  MAYBE I DO UNDERSTAND IT  MAYBE I UNDERSTAND EXACTLY WHAT THIS POEM IS ABOUT  BUT I JUST DON’T CARE BECAUSE IT WAS WRITTEN BY SOME SELF-INVOLVED MORON AND EVEN THOUGH HE THINKS THAT HIS “METAPHOR FOR THE SELF” IS DEEP AND SHIT IT’S ACTUALLY JUST SOME STUPID LITTLE POEM AND IT DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING  HOW ABOUT THAT

I’M A SMART PERSON  I NEVER FORGET ANYTHING  IN THE LIVING ROOM WITH THAT OLD RED COUCH AND THE TV WITH THE WOOD FRAME  AND YOU WERE ON THE FLOOR AND MOM WAS SCREAMING AT YOU AND YOU WERE JUST APOLOGIZING OVER AND OVER YOU WERE SO PATHETIC  I REMEMBER THAT

CAN I HAVE ONE OF THOSE DONUTS

I CAN’T BE HERE RIGHT NOW  I HAVE TO GO  I CAN’T  THE AMBULANCE IS COMING THEY’LL HELP YOU  YOU’RE GOING TO THE HOSPITAL  YOU JUST NEED SURGERY OR SOMETHING  YOU ASSHOLE  YOU FAT FUCKING ASSHOLE DAD PLEASE