My Understanding of Equus

A few years ago, I heard that Daniel Radcliffe was going all-out nude for something. Now I have finally connected the dots, he went nude for a play I'd eventually have to read. That made the reading a slightly more intriguing one. I like it when I can visualize the exact actor playing the role. I don't like forming my own picture of the character. And nudity makes the play feel gritty and raw to me, especially when the actor is Harry Potter.

I really like this play, and I'm not just saying that to be agreeable. I read it in about four hours practically straight through, only breaking for American Idol at 8 p.m.

One thing I find forced is when Dysart meets with Alan in the dead of night. Everyone knows that psychiatrists don't work on a psych ward at night. That time is reserved for patients to sleep. Perhaps it would be more viable if Dysart and Alan had this breakthrough session in the early morning while the ward is still calm and quiet.

The minute I read about Alan's fear of the horses watching him, I kept thinking of Panopticism and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby--the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckelberg. I think it is inherent in us to always feel like someone or something is watching us when in reality, we are our most captive audience. Our conscience is inescapable, for we cannot escape ourselves, and that is why most criminals confess. Though there is no evidence around us of our trangressions, there is evidence within us and the evidence is too much to live with. We must always release our sins to the open air.

The real A-hole is Frank--what a close-minded, ignorant, dopey man. I hate people who castigate television. There is nothing wrong with TV. It doesn't make us dumber. It doesn't turn our brain to mush. It stimulates the brain and informs us greatly. It keeps us abreast of the times. I really don't see the difference between books and TV--they are all a text in their own right.

But I see what Shaffer is trying to do with the denial of television. Coupled with Frank's horror of finding his son with another girl watching a dirty movie, Shaffer is trying to show how the denial of passion, pleasure, and human need can send anyone over the edge. Shaffer is not just blaming Frank, but society as a whole. Society constructs what is acceptable in our nature, thereby making us hate within ourselves--our sexuality and need for intimacy--what doesn't fit the mold.

Sex is a very natural, beautiful thing. It's just that it gets cheapened by human depravity and becomes a topic of shame. It is something pure made impure by human vice.

All the youth and free-spiritedness are sucked out of Alan, because he is denied feelings and urges that are nurtured in other healthy, growing, young men. He has been reduced to jingles (I cracked up at the Doublemint one). And he is made wild and rageful, because of the confinement within his father's dogma. Alan needs a God, but when the Christ poster is taken down, he finds horses to be his God, confusing horses and God with his overbearing father and society as a whole. Because the restrictions of this God are too much to take, he attacks the only creatures he can, the most defenseless of all threats present in the play--horses.

In the end, I got the impression that what Schaffer is really trying to say is that we may champion animal rights and sometimes go for a vegan lifestyle, but no matter what we do to ease our conscience, we are all hypocrites just by being a part of this society that preys and feeds off weaker, defenseless animals. We may nurse a sick dog on the street to health, but then we pick up our forks and dive into "Approved Flesh" (Shaffer 109).

There is no escape from being predators. Our survival is based on the slaying of weaker animals, all part of the food chain. So perhaps rather than castigating another for doing what is socially and morally wrong, we must look at ourselves doing the very same thing. We always look around and find error in others when we are just as much to blame as the rest. If there's any hope left for human beings, it's to understand our depravity, to not judge harshly, and to accept that killing and attack are all part of the greater plan.