Zach's number 3

Carol right away is presented in her appearance as sort of a slob-looking girl who one could imagine to play in a grunge band in a garage somewhere, which immediately made me discredit her intellect as a serious college student before actually knowing her scholastic abilities.  John, on the other hand, is shown as a groomed, proper, suit-wearing professor surrounded by big books in his office and is shown talking about buying his big new house; a sign of his superior success.  In act 1, my impression of Carol further deteriorated every time she asked a question, which was almost constantly, and really reminded me of a young child constantly questioning "what" and "why" to everything.  Instead of really getting annoyed by the constant interruptions to his probably self-thought majestic speeches, John uses these questions as fuel to boost and praise his own grand, full of himself intellect.  I also thought it interesting how the camera often focuses on John's hands, particularly his wedding ring, which makes me as the viewer sympathize with his character more simply because I know more about his background than I do Carol's, whose is rather mysterious and unknown.  Another oddity is when the professor almost randomly states "I am not your father" and later says he talk to Carol as he would talk to his own son.  Carol is taken aback by these statements and throughout the act is constantly trying to escape both John's physical (but definitely not sexual) advances toward her and the actual confines of his office, only to be nearly forced to stay by another one of John's rambling speeches or the physical blocking of the door.  All-in-all, throughout act 1, Carol is portrayed as a rather stupid, confused student who is constantly retreating from John's continual physical and spoken advances, though the roles between these two characters almost completely switch in the second half of the play.  All of a sudden, Carol is presented as this suit-wearing, neat woman with a newly found vocabulary, where John is now physically and mentally disheveled, actually lights up a cigarette and drinks alcohol in his office, and seems totally defeated leading up to-or until-his retaliation of physical violence at the end.  By the end of the play, Carol never states that she doesn't understand one of John's comments or big words like in act 1, and is now the one who is literally backing John up against the wall and now "teaching" him a lesson.