What is Equus the play about?

Asked by: Nicole Carstens

Equus is a play by Peter Shaffer written in 1973, telling the story of a psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious fascination with horses. Shaffer was inspired to write Equus when he heard of a crime involving a 17-year-old who blinded six horses in a small town in Suffolk.

What is the message of Equus?

Some of the major themes of Equus are modern society, normality and blame. The play is a strong critique on the commercialized and conformist society that we live in and its effect on the individuality of people.

What does the horse represent in Equus?

The horse is the primary symbol in Equus, and at a glance, it represents everything we might expect a horse to represent: power, freedom, animal desire. Indeed, Alan Strang’s worship of the horse-god Equus emphasizes the pure physicality of the horse.

What is the style of the play Equus?

Dramatic Genre
Equus closely resembles a suspense thriller in form and structure, revealing Shaffer’s fondness for detective stories. Dysart is much like a classic sleuth solving a crime; he painstakingly tracks down the factors that led Alan to blind the six horses.

Why does Alan blind the horses?

Alan, however, ended up in blinding horses as the result of his worship of this deity. Why did Alan blind horses? I found some possible reasons for his blinding horses: his ambivalence to the god, Equus; or the embodiment of his super-ego; or the denial of adult society. I suggest, more importantly, the fear of Eros.

What’s the meaning of Equus?

horses

Medical Definition of Equus
: a genus of the family Equidae that comprises the horses, asses, zebras, and related recent and extinct mammals.

What do the eyes represent in Equus?

Peter Shaffer uses eyes and sight in Equus to represent power and judgement and they can be used to explain Alan and Dysart’s actions and track character changes within them. By making eyes and sight a motif, Shaffer is sending a message that people are strongly influenced by what others think about them.

What animal is a horse related to?

donkeys

The only surviving branch of the horse family is the genus Equus, which includes zebras, asses, and donkeys along with the horse.

How are horses and zebras related?

Zebras are closely related to horses but they’re not the same species. They’re both in the Equidae family and they can even breed with each other. The offspring (zebroids) have different names dependent on the parents. A male zebra and female horse produces a zorse, and a female zebra and male horse produces hebra.

What happened at the end of Equus?

By the end of the novel, Dysart has fully adopted Alan’s pain as his own, in the way that he has for so many children that came before. He wears the chain in his mouth that Alan loathes, the chain that represents confinement and a loss of freedom.

Why is Dysart jealous of Alan?

Dysart argues that his pain is his own, and that in fact he is jealous of Alan. He admits that he feels himself to be a hypocrite, by failing to live his life as he wants to. By contrast, although Alan has committed a criminal act, he is also free and living life to the full when he is with the horses.

What does Dysart use as a truth drug on Alan?

Dysart tells Hesther that he will give Alan a placebo pill to trick him into divulging everything; he thinks Alan is ready to “abreact”—to express the things he has been repressing, and thus begin to overcome his illness.

How many years has it been since Dysart kissed his wife?

The affection that we sense here becomes even more apparent when we consider that Dysart hasn’t kissed his wife in six years and in this way Hester is used to reinforce the impression of Dysart as one dissatisfied with his own life.