Another key theme in the play is guilt, which the judge feels when he passes judgement fro allowing Ken to die but he also feels glad because he feels that he has made the right decision, but on the other hand Dr Emerson should feel guilty about how he does not listen to Ken’s wish but he doesn’t. The issue of Ken’s right is not only discussed in this play but it also affects other people’s lives and this helps to makes the play work very well dramatically.
It is true that in the play the characters are either for or against Ken’s choice to die but this does not necessarily make the play less dramatical and undeveloped. For the people who are supporting Ken’s choice they find that they don’t really want to let Ken die because of his intelligence and humour. Dr. Scott is upset that Ken has chosen to die but knows that he is making the right decision. Even so she tries to make him change his mind. ‘But if you become happy?’ ‘But I don’t want to become happy by becoming the computer section of a complex machine. And morally, you must accept my decision.’ As does the rest of the people who are supporting him, so it is not simply that people are for and against. In providing the relationship between Dr Scott and Ken, Brian Clark is showing us that Ken is a real guy even though he is disabled, and as we are reading this play we really have to see him as a real guy, and not as just a case study of a patient.
You can see that Ken is a credible human being in this play because of the way his character progresses and develops. At the beginning he is just a funny, intelligent sculptor who is badly injured in a car accident and finds himself paralysed. He makes unexpected, embarrassing jokes all through the play, but mostly at the beginning when things are going well and he is only just beginning to realise what his situation means. ‘Finished Nurse?’ ‘What do you mean? Have I finished Nurse. I haven’t started her yet!’ Although he does not make as many jokes towards the end of the play, he still makes some rather embarrassing comments ‘You have lovely breasts…I’m not about to jump out of bed and rape you or anything’. At the end of the play, during and after he has decided that he wants to die, he is going through a lot and he starts to lose his temper more frequently with people who treat him like he is not a normal human, like Mrs Boyle and the Dr Travers, where he is trying to prove to them that he is mentally stable and they are continually trying to find a way to say he isn’t which makes him angry. He then tries to control it which makes him more angry and stressed. With Mrs Boyle he gets angry because he hates the way she is treating him as though he isn’t a human, ‘Christ Almighty, you’re doing it again. Listen to yourself, woman. I say something offensive about you and you turn you professional cheek. If you were human, if you were treating me as a human, you’d tell me to bugger off. Can’t you see that this is why I’ve decided that life isn’t worth living? I am not human and I’m even more convinced of that by your visit than I was before, so how does that grab you? The very exercise of your so-called professionalism makes me want to die.’ With Dr Travers he gets angry because he gets annoyed that figuring out whether Ken is mental enough involves taking some tests and that he can’t figure it out by talking to him, and then he feels he has to prove himself ‘Of course I’m angry … No, no … I’m … Yes. I am angry. But I am trying to hold it in because you’ll just write me off as a manic phase of a manic depressive cycle.’ The very fact that Ken has such a lively and intelligent mind as Brian Clark has given him is proof enough that Ken is a credible human being and not just a case study of a patient.
The title of the play is a clue to the fact that this play is more than just a vehicle, Whose Life is it anyway?, it involves the word life and this gives a vital clue that there is more going on in the play than the ethical issue of euthanasia, there is a story behind that and that is what makes the play so great and not what the comment suggests at all.
