Equus

Alan Strang, the troubled teenager at the center of Equus, is both the mystery to be solved and the subject of the play’s deepest philosophical questions. Although the action begins after his crime—when he “blinded six horses with a metal spike” (24)—the play is structured around the process of uncovering that act and the motivations behind it. The narrative jumps backward, using flashbacks and therapeutic dialogue to reconstruct the events leading up to the crime. Notably, however, these events are portrayed from Alan’s perspective, imbuing the depictions with a level of narrative sympathy which may not be present were the memories presented from the perspective of Frank, Jill, or Dalton. As Dysart works to draw out Alan’s memories, the audience is brought into the investigative process. Alan’s fragmented speech, evasions, and moments of silence reflect his inner confusion, but also serve to create suspense. The structure of the play gives priority not to the event itself, but to its emotional and symbolic significance. Alan’s psychological treatment is the central action. The crime, horrifying as it is, becomes a window into deeper questions about passion, repression, and belief. Alan is not merely a subject to be analyzed; he is the narrative engine of the play, driving forward the dramatic and philosophical tension.

Alan’s character is shaped by his environment and upbringing. He is the product of contradictory influences: His mother, Dora, is a devout Christian who fills his head with biblical stories and notions of guilt, while his father, Frank, is a stern atheist who attempts to suppress any form of irrationality. The two do not offer Alan clarity but “tension” (34). Each tries to mold him according to their beliefs and, in doing so, they leave him spiritually disoriented. Alan is not a synthesis of his parents’ beliefs (or lack of belief) but a living exemplar of the dangers of unresolved dichotomy. Alan absorbs the language of religion from his mother and the skepticism of his father, but neither offers him a space to express his desires. Society offers him even less. He works a dull job, is discouraged from dreaming, and is bombarded by consumer culture. In this context, Alan’s invention of a private religion centered around Equus becomes an act of resistance. He creates a belief system that allows him to feel awe and power, qualities absent from the world around him. In this way, Alan becomes a mirror of his environment: a symbol of its contradictions, its repressions, and its failures, yet also an illustration of the fundamentally human yearning for an explanation of the complicated world.

Alan’s fantasy religion is central to his identity. He deifies horses, merging them with the divine figure Equus. He develops elaborate rituals that blend religious language, sexual longing, and personal mythology. Riding Nugget in the night, Alan strips naked and recites prayers to Equus. Like his mother’s Christ, Alan’s Equus is locked up in chains, punished for “the sins of the world” (76). Alan feels himself similarly bound by these chains, part of his desire to become one with Equus. His god is both a source of liberation and punishment. Equus becomes a vessel through which Alan processes his shame, desire, and confusion. When Jill invites him to the stable and encourages him to act on his desires, Alan’s fragile belief system collapses. The horses are witnesses to his attempted intimacy and, importantly, his failure. Suddenly, the horses which once comforted him now seem judgmental. Equus sees him “forever and ever” (121) and he cannot tolerate this scrutiny from what was, so recently, a source of comfort. Overwhelmed by shame, Alan blinds them in a desperate attempt to silence that gaze. The act is horrifying, but it is also tragic. The blinding marks the breakdown of a belief system that had given him structure and meaning. Dysart’s treatment of Alan attempts to unravel this system. But the question remains whether Alan is truly healed. By the end of the play, he has confessed and unburdened himself, but he is also at risk of being emptied. Equus, for all its destructiveness, was also Alan’s salvation. Dysart fears that curing Alan will remove the only part of him that ever lived. To make Alan normal, Dysart fears, would be to remove everything which makes him Alan.

Dora Strang, Alan’s mother, represents the religious dimension of Equus and serves as one of the most influential figures in her son’s psychological development. Her faith is not fanatical, but it is deeply embedded in her worldview. She reads the Bible to Alan and sends him to Sunday School. In a disorientating, changing world, she hopes that the security and assurance that she receives from the Bible will provide similar comfort for her “gentle” (35) son and his “anormal” behavior. Through these teachings, Alan absorbs stories of judgment, sacrifice, and divine punishment. He later fuses these elements into his own invented mythology, replacing Jesus with Equus and creating rituals of suffering and ecstasy that mirror and even satirize his mother’s beliefs. Although Dora’s intentions are sincere, her religious influence plants the seeds for Alan’s confused sense of guilt and sanctity. Her version of religion is filled with morality and emotional intensity but lacks nuance or flexibility. Alan internalizes the idea of an all-seeing, all-judging God, which later transfers to the horses’ gaze. Nora’s religious influence does not merely inspire; it constrains. In shaping Alan’s moral imagination and attempting to dictate the “environment for a sensitive boy” (38), she also prepares him for the pain that results when his desires clash with divine law.

Dora is also deeply skeptical of psychiatry. During a conversation with Dysart, she expresses resentment at how mental health professionals often blame the parents. She accuses Dysart—a man who is, to her, the representative of the entirety of the psychiatric profession—of thinking of parents as a “dirty word” (90), believing that he and his colleagues always blame parents for the crimes of their children. Her frustration is both personal and social. It reflects a broader cultural resistance to the rise of psychiatry in the 1970s, a period when psychoanalysis was increasingly seen as pathologizing normal family dynamics. Yet Dora’s accusation is also a form of defense. She cannot face the idea that her well-meaning actions may have contributed to Alan’s behavior. Instead, she projects blame outward, dismissing psychiatric explanations as fashionable excuses. Her skepticism reflects her vulnerability. She wants to be seen as a loving mother, not as the root of her son’s trauma. Her dismissal of psychiatry is not merely ideological; it is emotional. It is her way of avoiding guilt. But Shaffer does not portray her as a villain. Rather, she is a tragic figure, unable to see how her devotion to goodness may have distorted her son’s sense of right and wrong.

Frank Strang, Alan’s father, offers a sharply contrasting worldview from that of his wife. Where Dora is religious and sentimental, Frank is rational, secular, and politically left leaning. He identifies as an atheist and a socialist. He sees religion as a dangerous force that corrupts the mind and misleads the vulnerable. Even within his own marriage, the “tiffs about religion” (52) are the obvious reason for any issue with Alan and with anything else, Frank suggests. For Frank, religion is not just irrelevant; it is harmful. He blames Dora’s religious influence for Alan’s emotional confusion and ultimately for his crime. His atheism and working-class politics place him within a segment of 1970s British society that rejected both traditional religion and conservative values. Yet Frank’s rationalism is brittle. He imposes control but offers no emotional support. He tears religious pictures from Alan’s wall and replaces them with a framed portrait of a horse, an act that later proves ironically significant. Rather than replacing the spiritual with the secular, he has encouraged his son to invent a boutique spirituality with tragic results. His worldview may be secular, but it lacks warmth or flexibility. His authority is intellectual, not emotional, and it fails to reach his son. In this sense, Frank’s irreligion is a mirror of his wife’s religion, with neither able to connect with Alan.

Frank is also a man haunted by shame. On the night of Alan’s crime, Frank encounters his son in a pornographic theatre. His reaction is not only shock but fear. He tries to drag Alan away quietly, seemingly “very agitated” (107) not only by finding his son in the theater but by being seen in such an establishment himself. The incident reveals Frank’s own hidden behavior and sexual repression. His presence at the theatre is not new, as suggested by his poorly invented excuses; his desperate desire to keep it secret reflects his inner conflict. After Alan blinds the horses, Frank is left to connect the dots. He believes that the encounter at the theatre triggered the event. His guilt is profound, yet he does not want to admit his role in his son’s behavior. Though he does not confess it directly, he clearly sees himself as partially responsible. His shame becomes one more unspoken tension in a household already filled with contradiction. Frank’s atheism does not save him from guilt; his politics do not shield him from confusion. Instead, these apparent solutions and comforts are revealed to be limited. Like Nora, he is a parent who tried to shape Alan, only to realize too late that his influence was both incomplete and damaging.