Hard to Swallow

Hard to swallow

The play” Hard to Swallow” telling the tragic story of young Catharine Dunbar. Catherine Dunbar, who suffers from anorexia, stopped eating when she was about 15 years old and died, after a long and hard period of pain and suffering, when she was about 23 years old.

Who or what facts are responsible for Catherine’s anorexia?

Is it her fathers’ attitude? The mothers’ approach?

The medical authorities?

Herself?

From my view it is the fault of many events, and not just one person to blame in.

Her father, John Dunbar preferred to ignore the fact that his girl is sick. He wanted that things will be in the way he wants, and in the way he says. He might have been too strict with her. Also the fact that he moved to Saudi Arabia, after losing

his job affected Catherine for my opinion.

Maureen Dunbar just wanted to help. If the father acted the “bad” one in the play, she tried to be the “good” one. She wanted to be the opposite from John Dunbar; she was soft with Catherine, maybe too soft. She aloud her kind of things that are dangerous to aloud to her, like eating alone. In the end she Putted Catherine in a special hospital.

The hospital, that she been in, was dealing just with the eating problem, but they didn’t deal with the psychological problems as well as they should do. The girl definitely had problems, but they choose not to work with the psychological side. The hospital just feed her, and she was eating, because she wanted to go out of the hospital, but when she went out, she starved herself again. It was a circle, that shouldn’t happen. They didn’t tried to see why she is starving herself, or what the reasons she started. They didn’t try to help her to solve the problem, not in a way that will help her later also. They just helped her in the immediate moment. Not interested in the future.

The media I think have a large part of this. I don’t sure that in that case, but most of the anorexia cases caused because of the media. The media sells us a perfect image of tall-thin girls. Fact, how many “healthy” girls there is now days in the show business? Very few. But the society prefers a girl that thin like a stick, because this is fashionable. To be thin, to starve yourself.

And not just the media, Cloths shops also.