What does Equus mean in the play?

What does Equus mean in the play?

She is the one in the play introducing the word “equus” stating that it is a Latin word for horse by which Alan is “fascinated” since he has not heard a word with “two Us” (Equus 12).

What do horses 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.

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.

Who is Alan Strang in Equus?

An intense teenage boy, age 17, with a deep connection to religion, who blinds six horses one night in Harry Dalton’s stable. He is the son of Frank and Dora Strang. Up until the crime, Alan worked a job that he hated at an appliance store and spent weekends in Dalton’s stable, grooming the horses.

Who is Equus truly about?

Now there’s an understatement: Shaffer constructed an unconventional narrative about a disenchanted psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, and his latest patient, Alan Strang, a troubled 17-year-old in custody after stabbing a stable full of horses in the eyes. Shaffer changed the injured to just six.

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.

What are the themes in Equus?

Equus Themes

  • Passion. The place and value of passion in life is the most important issue raised by Shaffer’s play.
  • Religion and Worship.
  • Sex and Sexuality.
  • Modern Society and Normality.
  • Psychiatry, Repression, and Madness.

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 does Hesther represent in Equus?

Hesther seems to be a representative of the ‘Normal’, trying to explain the value of the conventional to Dysart. At the same time she also seems to be genuinely caring and almost maternal, after all she was the one who sent Alan to Dysart rather than jail.

Why did the boy blind the horses in Equus?

In the final scene of the play, Alan proceeds to blind the horses believing they condemn him for his sexual activity. In Equus, Peter Shaffer examines the influences that shaped the mind of seventeen year old stable boy Alan Strang leading up to the blinding of six horses.

What is the theme of Equus?

Psychiatry, Repression, and Madness.

Why did 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.

Why does Alan blind the horses?

Who is the protagonist in Equus?

Synopsis. Dr. Martin Dysart, a dissatisfied and disaffected psychiatrist, is faced with a unique case when a young man, Alan Strang, is brought to him for treatment. Alan, a passionate and obsessive horse lover, has blinded six horses, to the horror and surprise of his family.

What happens 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.

What is the structure of Equus?

Structure by act and Scene Equus is written in two acts and thirty-five scenes. Each act comes to a culmination in exposing the heart of Alan’s motivation. Many scenes are quite short with action moving fluidly backwards and forwards in time.

How do horses see the world?

Horses have “monocular” vision, meaning that each eye sees things differently and independently. Again, this benefits the prey animal as it allows him to look to the side to see where the rest of his herd is with one eye and at the same time look behind him to see if anything is coming after him.

What does Dysart’s dream mean?

The dream seems to be based on classical myths and involves ritual sacrifice of children. In the dream, Dysart is the chief priest and cuts open the children. This makes him feel sick but he is afraid to give himself away. However, eventually the mask he is wearing slips and his assistants turn on him.

What happened at the end of Equus?

What does the word Equus mean?

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