By David Keating
Peter Shaffer’s play Equus asks the audience an essential question about how we are to shape not only our own personal perceptions of the world, but also how we are to shape those perceptions as a society. The conflict Dr. Martin Dysart experiences in the play is that of a man faced with the modern dilemma of what Sigmund Freud called the “problem of religion”. The problem, stated by Freud and echoed by Shaffer in Equus is simply this: religion, once a powerful and driving force in the lives of human beings, must now be reevaluated because human beings have evolved to such a point where we realize it to be an object of useless expense which we no longer need. The problem is brought to a frenzied, neurotic head in the form of Alan’s mental breakdown, and in Dysart’s own reaction to it.
It is hard to imagine a more mismatched couple than Mr. And Mrs. Strang. Frank Strang is, as Dysart describes him, an “old –type Socialist, I’d say. Relentlessly self-improving” (Shaffer 28). He is a man for whom productivity and efficiency matter a great deal, and for whom spirituality is a waste of time. He is an ardent atheist, and believes that the bible is responsible for his son’s violent crime. Dora Strang, on the other hand, is an obsessive and neurotic devotee of religion. She lives in a world dreaming of ladies and gentlemen, a card-carrying member of the bourgeois who believes she married beneath her. These parents represent two polar opposite extremes, and they only share one common trait: the denial and castigation of sensual pleasure. Frank is a relentlessly self-improving intellectual who seems to be of the same character type as Da Vinci that Freud described in Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood. Freud theorizes that Leonardo’s drive to research and create was driven by his repression of sexuality as a result of his sexual attraction to his mother in infancy. Frank Strang is a chaste father figure who shames Alan because he would rather watch television than read books. He seems to have repressed his sexuality using intellectual curiosity. Dora is also a chaste figure, for reasons of religion. Alan’s childhood is shaped by this double shaming coming from both directions. Because of this, he is pent up with anger toward both his parents who pull him in different directions. In his tape-recorded message to Dr. Dysart he says, “No one ever says to cowboys ‘receive my meaning’! They wouldn’t dare. Or ‘God’ all the time. [mimicking his mother] ‘God sees you, Alan. God’s got eyes everywhere’” (Shaffer 49). Alan feels constantly monitored and judged by both his parents’ watchful eyes.
Both of Alan’s parents are highly puritanical, but despite the high ideals they preach, they both fail to live up to their ideals. Frank goes out alone in the evenings to watch pornographic movies, and Dora fails in her piety in her violent and vindictive behavior toward her husband and her son. This is evidenced in the scene in the hospital room when, with sudden and unexpected violence, she slaps her son in his hospital room because she cannot endure his silent stare. Afterwards she rants to Dr. Dysart that her son was a good boy until the devil came. “If you knew God, Doctor, you would know about the devil…” (Shaffer 78). Alan’s parents represent two extremes that even they cannot live up to. Thus Alan has become hopelessly confused and neurotic.
Freud talks a great deal about Alan’s form of childhood neurosis in Totem and Taboo. When Alan was very young, he had a brief but wondrous horseback ride on the beach, but his father had abruptly ended this adventure, thinking it too dangerous. The entire incident sounds very traumatic. The child experiences an exhilarating ride on the horse, but is suddenly pulled off by his father, who is yelling and screaming, and he falls to the ground and injures himself. He is filled with guilt and shame by his parents for being on the horse in the first place. Then the horse gallops off and covers his parents with sand and water. After hearing this story, Dysart asks Alan if this is the reason he never rode a horse afterwards, and Alan gets very defensive. In Totem and Taboo, Freud describes the kind of effect a childhood trauma involving an animal can have. Freud says that, “as a rule the phobia is attached to animals in which the child has hitherto shown a specially lively interest” (Freud 492). Alan initially showed a lively interest in the horse, but his violent experience with it skews his feelings into a phobia/obsession. Freud theorizes that a child’s fear of a specific type of animal is actually a fear of his father displaced onto an animal. Freud goes on to argue that this displacement is a result of a boy’s hatred for his father that arises from rivalry for his mother, a hatred that is in direct conflict with his natural affection and admiration for his father. Freud writes, “The child finds relief from the conflict arising out of this double-sided emotional attitude toward his father by displacing his hostile and fearful feelings on to a substitute for his father” (Freud 493). Freud uses an example of little Hans, a boy who is not only frightened of horses but who also approaches them with admiration and interest. Freud writes, “As soon as his anxiety began to diminish, he identified himself with the dreaded creature” (Freud 493). Alan’s feelings about horses echo this same mixture of fascination and fear. Alan’s feelings about horses, or about his created god, Equus, are very sexual, most likely these feelings are sexual feelings he felt as a child for both parents that were displaced in the form of attraction to horses. Alan also fears Equus. He describes Equus as an angry god; Alan calls him, “a mean bugger! Ride – or fall! That’s Straw Law” (Shaffer 67). Later, Alan cannot stand the watchful, judging eyes of the horses; he is mortified that Equus has witnessed his failure to procure a sexual act. Equus, who Alan has designed to replace his father, judges Alan in the same way his father does. Alan’s violent eruption is the manifestation of his anger toward his father, his father who is always watching and always present.
Freud’s parallels between this childhood totemism and the formation of tribal totemisms clarify many of the religious issues in the play. Freud discusses Darwin’s primal horde and the idea of a violent and jealous father who keeps all the females to himself and drives away his sons as they grow up. These sons then band together and kill and devour their father. Freud theorizes that these brothers were filled with the same contradictory feelings that can be seen in the ambivalent father-complexes of children. They hated their father, who presented an obstacle to the satisfaction of their ambition and sexual desires, but they loved and admired him also. Once they kill him, they are overwhelmed by their feelings of guilt, and impose the same restrictions he had imposed on them upon themselves. They create a totem as a surrogate father, an animal god who would take the place of the father figure they had killed (Freud 502). The events in Alan’s life on the day of his crime parallel this process. In the pornographic movie theater, Alan sees his father and is seen by him. The simultaneity of this double shame is unbearable. He is caught by paternal authority, but at the same time discovers that this authority is nothing but a sham. He has figuratively killed his father by seeing him at the movie theater. Frank’s authority has been completely undermined, and he might as well be dead because his authority is gone. Alan effectively kills his father with the line, “No. I’m stopping here…I’ve got to see her home…it’s proper” (Shaffer 94). There is a long pause after he makes this timid but firm statement, and in this pause Frank realizes that he has lost whatever authority he had. As Alan stares at his father’s face as the bus drives off, it is as if he is watching his father’s dead body carried off into the night, a body he killed with his own statement. Following this, Jill takes Alan to the stable. Alan tells Dysart he felt free to do anything after seeing his father at the theater, but then when it comes time to perform the act, Alan is impotent under the watchful eye of Equus. Alan has been forced to impose his father’s restrictions on himself now, and these restrictions are imposed by the figure of Equus. When Alan pleads with Equus, he is really pleading with his father, “It wasn’t me. Not really me. Me!…Forgive me!...Take me back again! Please!…PLEASE! I’ll never do it again. I swear…I swear!” (Shaffer 105). Alan has created his god Equus to judge him, because he has lost his father’s judgment in the same way the sons of Darwin’s primal horde created a totem to replace the father-judge they killed. But the deity Alan has created is so strong, so all-powerful, that Alan snaps, and gauges out the horses eyes in the belief that it will prevent Equus from seeing what he has done, in order to allay the tremendous guilt he has heaped upon himself.
The feelings Alan experienced as a child were not uncommon. Many children experience trauma far worse than simply falling off a horse, or grow up with parents with far greater problems than simply not getting along. Some crucial step in Alan’s development must have been missing to result in this sort of neurosis. One aspect of his childhood which could have resulted in such strange perceptions was his stunted intellectual growth. At home he refuses to read books, in revolt against his father’s paternal tyranny that also forbids television. His mother indulged Alan’s resistance to work, allowing him to watch television at the neighbor’s house. Frank tells Dysart, “His mother indulged him. She doesn’t care if he can hardly write his own name...Just as long as he’s happy, she says…” (Shaffer 33). Alan’s confusing upbringing, with his mother pinning up images of Jesus Christ and his father tearing them down, resulted in a strong sexual/spiritual craving in the boy. In Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, Freud writes, “When the period of infantile sexual researches has been terminated by a wave of energetic sexual repression, the instinct for research has the distinct possible vicissitudes open to it” (Freud 453). Alan’s period of sexuality was terminated by intense shame heaped upon him by both parents, much in the same way his joy in riding the horse on the beach was ripped away from him by his father. Freud would probably argue that Alan has fallen into the first possible vicissitude, that in which curiosity remains inhibited and the free activity of intelligence may be limited for the subject’s entire lifetime, and which gives an effective impetus to the outbreak of a neurotic illness. This has most certainly happened in Alan’s case; both his intellectual and sexual development have been repressed and it results in an obsessive desire for spiritual fulfillment.
Alan’s job at the electronics store is the perfect example of how unfulfilling Alan’s life circumstances are. When Dysart asks Alan why he worked at the electronics store instead of at his father’s printing shop, Alan answers, “I haven’t the aptitude” (Shaffer 53). Alan is forced into a boring, monotonous job because he is not given the opportunity to do anything else in which he might be able to act out his fantasies. That is, until he is given the opportunity to work in the stables. To work weekends as a groom is for Alan more than an opportunity to escape his conflicts at home. On the surface, it serves to satisfy his love of horses, but in depth, it satisfies his religious cravings. In Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming, Freud argues that creative writing gives adult expression to the childhood activity of play. In a similar way, working as a horse groom could have given expression to Alan’s fascination with horses. But it seems to be too little too late, for what could have been a healthy activity turns into an obsessive, sexual religious ritual.
Dr. Dysart is a man who is plagued by Freud’s problem of religion. While Freud believes he has a solution, Dysart is confused and unsure. Freud established his view of religion in both Totem and Taboo and The Future of an Illusion. Freud compared man’s need for god with a child’s need for a father. Freud argues that like a child, human beings feel a need for protection as well as justice, and thus we created a divine father. Freud believed that it was possible for man to live without a god, and that someday man will use scientific reasoning to outgrow the need for spiritual beliefs. But although Freud can live without a god, Martin Dysart is experiencing difficulty. His fascination with classical Greece conceals a deeper spiritual longing. Alan seems to bring Dysart’s personal conflict to a boiling point. Dysart tells the audience at the opening of the play,
The thing is,
I’m desperate. You see I’m wearing the
horse’s head myself.
That’s the
feeling. All reigned up in old language
and old assumptions,
straining to
jump clean-hoofed on to a whole new track of being I only
suspect is there” (Shaffer 18).
When Dysart comes across Alan, he sees Alan as someone who has shed these old assumptions, someone who has successfully jumped to this new track of being. Dysart realizes he has never known the kind of worship Alan knows and becomes jealous. Alan seems to push Dysart straight to the breaking point, leading to his outburst to Hesther in which he says, “That’s what his stare has been saying to me all this time. ‘At least I galloped. When did you?’ I’m jealous, Hesther. Jealous of Alan Strang”, and later, “Without worship you shrink, it’s as brutal as that…I shrank my own life” (Shaffer 82). Yet at the same time, Dysart believes that psychological normality kills the faculty to worship. Dysart experiences a tremendous conflict in his duty to take away Alan’s symptoms and lead him to “sanity”, because he believes that in doing so he will only make Alan like himself, cold and unable to experience spirituality.
To a large extent I can identify with Dysart’s struggle. I myself am a person very much like Dysart. I am also not religious, but moreover I am also a very unemotional person who tends not to feel things very deeply. I have often felt myself incapable of feeling strong emotion, the same way Dr. Dysart thinks himself incapable of feeling. Yet I am fascinated by those maudlin people who experience life at such an emotional and spiritual level. On one hand, my practical existence makes life more comfortable and easy to take, yet on the other hand one misses out on the terrific highs of human life, highs like Alan experiences riding Nugget out in the fields. I can see why Dysart was troubled by Alan’s convictions, and why he might have been hesitant to take that strong feeling away from him. I too might have asked Hesther, “Can you think of anything worse one can do to anybody than take away their worship?” (Shaffer 80). He doesn’t want Alan to fall for his tricks, he wants Alan to resist his attempts to cure him.
Freud was convinced that man’s need for a father figure was the driving force behind religion, yet he did not deny the power and pervasiveness of this urge. Alan’s bizarre adolescence is Shaffer’s metaphor for the human experience, a twisted expression of the natural human need for spirituality. It raises many questions both about psychology and human existence, and makes an audience question their own attitudes concerning their spiritual needs. Alan could be any one of us. Certainly, Alan is not as Strang as one might wish to believe.