David Mamet’s Oleanna is a realistic play, which takes viewers into the complications that happen when a professor meets with a struggling student in his office. It is a compelling story of miscommunication and taking words out of context. Though the story has a rather simple story line it shows that if one does not speak their intentions clearly, they may end up in a bad situation. Mamet shows that John clearly deserves sympathy by sharing his personal struggles, showing his willingness to go above and beyond for Carol, by showing the viewers how Carol twists his words into something he may have said, but did not mean, and by showing how John is willing to lose everything to stand up for his freedom of thought. Early in the play, John tells Carol about the many struggles he had in life. The play starts off with John on the phone with his wife, this conversation tells the…show more content… For example, when Carol asks John in the beginning of the play why he is willing to help her, he answers, “I like you.”, but when she writes up the accusations she states that he told her he would let her rewrite her paper because he liked her. This was not his wording and makes things sound worse than they are. It is also possible to believe that she was setting him up the whole time. In the beginning of the screenplay she has a very small vocabulary, and then in her accusations against John, which she claims she wrote herself, she uses words that she never would have known before. After all of Carol’s accusations, John could have just gave in to her group’s demands, which was a list of books they wanted banned. This list included John’s own book, which he was extremely proud of and really believed in. He could have had all of the charges dropped, but instead decided to stand behind his freedom of thought, which is pretty