Midterm Paper

Jada Augustine
English 638
Dr. Steven Wexler
3/22/10
Dysart's Life: A Search for Worship
The play Equus by Peter Shaffer consists of various motifs and theories that have been and remain to be analyzed. It is a short yet deep play. Upon first reading the play, I wanted to analyze the reasons for Alan’s sexual desires. However, during a second reading, I became interested in a deeper aspect of the play—Alan and Dysart’s longing for a life of worship. Equus contains extensive language of worship, which actually demonstrates the weakness of religion in the play. Alan has discovered that his object of worship is the horse, while Dysart yearns for worship.
Dysart narrows Alan’s issue (not problem) to be worship: “I only know it’s the core of his life. What else has he got? Think about him. He can hardly read” (Shaffer 79). After knowing Alan, Dysart does not think there is anything wrong with him. Rather, after determining that worship is what Alan has, he recognizes the emptiness and lack of worship in his own life: “What worship has he every known? Real worship! Without worship you shrink, it’s as brutal as that… I shrank my own life” (Shaffer 81). The “he” Dysart refers to is himself as he complains to Hesther. He sees Alan as content and seeks the life Alan has; Alan has gotten what he wants most in life—worship. Dysart wants to be like Alan. Therefore, he makes it his mission to get into Alan’s mind and tries to understand him while realizing his profession is a waste. A psychoanalytic analysis of the play demonstrates Dysart’s need for worship and his goal to get into Alan’s mind to be eventually like him.
Alan is a product of his parents: his overly religious Christian mother and his self-proclaimed atheist father. Alan’s mother, Dora, reads him the bible from his childhood (Shaffer 24). His father, Frank, on the other hand, is an aetheist (Shaffer 27); he believes religion is the root of all the evil in the world and that the troubles in the world are a result of religion. As a result, he does not find religion necessary or satisfactory. Consequently, he blames Alan’s problems on religion. On the surface it seems as though he has no element of worship in his life. But Alan sees Frank’s pornographic movies as his (Frank’s) gods. Alan can only think in terms of worship, so when he catches his father at a pornographic film, he realizes that his father also needs some sort of an element of worship in his life: “All the men—staring up like they were in church. Like they were a sort of congregation” (Shaffer 92). While forbidding Alan to watch even regular television, he watches pornographic movies in secrecy. For Alan, both his parents have their gods and he struggles to find his own since none of them provide meaning or fulfillment. In his article, “Equus: Human Conflicts and the Trinity”, Mitchell Hay says, “Alan is clearly suffering from a deep-seated neurosis which manifests itself in typical symptoms: divided self-hood, alienated selfhood and emasculated selfhood” (Hay 3). Alan feels completely detached from himself and therefore must find something outside of his self for meaning of life.
Not only does Dora instill religion in Alan from a very early age, but she also reads him a book called Prince, which apparently is a book about horses: “And when he was seven or eight, I used to have to read him the same book over and over, all about a horse… it was called Prince, and no one could ride him” (Shaffer 23). Because Prince (the horse) was so mighty and majestic, no one was worthy to ride him. Alan became obsessed with horses to the point that they become the center of his attention; they are all he thinks about as his mother read the book repeatedly to him because he wanted her to. Being a mother, she could have been in control of the situation and brought variety of books in Alan’s life, but she did not. She let him be in control of his own life and control what he read.
Dora also gave Alan a picture of Christ which in her own words was also quite extreme; she says, the picture “was a reproduction of Our Lord on his way to Calvary. Alan found it in Reeds Art Shop, and fell absolutely in love with it… In all fairness I must admit it was a little extreme. The Christ was loaded down with chains” (Shaffer 39). Again, though she thinks the picture is extreme, she does not forbid him from buying it. The act of Frank tearing Christ’s picture out in anger had a profound effect on Alan not only because it was a picture of Christ, but because of what replaced it—a picture of a horse. In his article “Journey into a mind”, Kerith Burke says, “Alan switches from being fascinated with a picture of Jesus to a picture of a horse. The end of Act I is the climax of the intertwinement of religion with sexuality, which Alan manifests in Equus. Equus is now the god that rules Alan” (Burke 1). Alan is confused as to what he should believe in because neither his mother’s or his father’s gods appeal to him. He looks for something outside of normalcy. He is confused but must find someone or something to worship and he finds it in the horse. The replacement of Christ’s image by a horse gives Alan more of a reason to worship the horse.
Worship becomes an important aspect of Alan’s life. He needs something to hold on to in a world of uncertainty; his world mostly so far has mostly consisted of him and his parents. Since childhood, he did not have clear direction in life because his parents disagreed about belief systems which left him to discover his own religion. Though Dora does not want to blame herself and Frank for what Alan did, Alan grew up as a repressed child. He had a complete disconnect from any normal human interactions. He did not have any friendly connections and was only stuck in a world of extremes. Therefore, he finds solace in worship—not of god, because that would be too conventional, but rather of a horse; nevertheless, he discovers worship. According to the OED, worship is to honor or revere as a supernatural being or power, or as a holy thing; to regard or approach with veneration; to adore with appropriate acts, rites, or ceremonies. Alan’s description of the encounter with the horse to Dysart always has the language of worship, especially because of the horse references in the books of Job and Revelation from the bible. He reveres the horse and sees it as his god who is a spirit and exists in all horses (Shaffer 63).
According to Dysart, Alan only lives his life at the time he feels one with the horse: “He’s a modern citizen for whom society doesn’t exist. He lives one hour every three weeks—howling in a mist” (Shaffer 79). Dysart is jealous of Alan, though he is Alan’s therapist and is supposed to cure his mental condition: “that boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have felt in any second of my life. And let me tell you something: I envy it… I’m jealous, Hesther. Jealous of Alan Strang” (Shaffer 80-81). Though Alan did not have a normal upbringing, he has found his religion: “To work weekends as a groom is for Alan more than an opportunity of escaping the conflicts of home. On the surface, it serves to satisfy his love of horses. In depth, it assuages his religious cravings” (Hay 4). Therefore, Dysart makes it his mission to get into Alan’s mind and be like him—experience what he only imagines he could experience.
In Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud says, “A psychical attitude… comes naturally enough to all of us; one of the forms in which love manifests itself—sexual love—has given us our most intense experience of an overwhelming sensation of pleasure and has thus furnished us with a pattern for our search for happiness (Freud 33). For Alan, the sexual desire does not come because of Jill but because of the horse. He is not able to perform the sexual act with Jill because his search of happiness has led to an overwhelming sensation of pleasure with the horse. Freud continues to say, “Religion restricts this play of choice and adaptation, since it imposes equally on everyone its own path to the acquisition of happiness and protection from suffering. It’s technique consists in depressing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world in a delusional manner—which presupposes an intimidation of the intelligence” (Freud 36). Freud’s statement is appropriate for Alan. Religion presupposes that everyone is equal and has had equal upbringing and therefore provides one form of belief system. However, Alan did not grow up in a “normal” household. He has eccentric parents who do not know what they themselves believe in. Both of them are hypocrites in one way or another. But Dysart recognizes Alan’s intelligence and does not see anything wrong with him. Alan combines his elements of desire and elements of worship and finds his object of worship and desire in the horse.
Dysart lacks worship in his life. He feels empty and only fulfills his life with his work. His relationship with his wife is non existent as they have not even kissed each other in six years (Shaffer 81); according to him, they live separate lives living in the same house. He is so fascinated by Alan’s life that he would rather spend a night getting into his mind than going home and being with his wife. By this point in the play, Dysart has realized that he cannot cure Alan because there is nothing abnormal about him; in fact, normalcy is a matter of relativity. He is more fascinated by more is Alan’s ability to get in tune with worshiping his object of desire—the horse.
Dysart wants to worship as well—he dreams about gods of ancient Greece and wishes to visit their various shrines in Greece someday: “I’d like to spend the next ten years wandering very slowly around the real Greece” (Shaffer 18). He lives his live vicariously through books. He reads about these places wishing he was there and despises his wife for being utterly worshipless: “If I had a son, I bet you he’d come out exactly like his mother. Utterly worshipless” (Shaffer 59). He fails to recognize that he himself is utterly worshipless too, yet he blames his wife; but subconsciously he knows the product of both of them will definitely be worshipless since they both do not know worship. He admires Alan who being only seventeen, has discovered worship.
Dysart’s problem is that he is invested in doing his job, but does not believe in it anymore. Dysart envies Alan and wishes he would live that life. He sees himself as abnormal; for him, there is a reason Alan does the things he does; his actions are completely logical. Dysart tells Hesther that Alan is a where he is because he himself did it; he got there: “Because it’s his… His pain. His own. He made it” (Shaffer 80). There is a sense of accomplishment that he sees in Alan, which he does not see in himself. Dysart is simply not doing what he wants to. He creates his own image via Alan’s. Jaques Lacan’s mirror stage not only discusses the child’s relationship with its own image, but also symbolically people’s discovery of themselves by a process of identification in an other. In an article titled “Lacan: The Mirror Stage” on the University of Hawaii website, it says, “For Lacan, the mirror stage establishes the ego as fundamentally dependent upon external objects, on an other” (English.hawaii.edu). Therefore, it is evident that Dysart is trying to form his own identity by dwelling on Alan’s; he is fixated and amazed by Alan’s lifestyle as Alan’s character becomes a mirror for him to look within.
Though the end of the play is symbolic in many ways, I wanted to focus on the worship. Dysart says, “There is now in my mouth, this sharp chain. And it never comes out… Essentially I cannot know what I do—yet I do essential things. Irreversible, terminal things. I stand in the dark with a pick in my hand, striking at heads” (Shaffer 110). At this point he has discovered himself, his ego, through Alan’s life. He realizes that he is not much different from Alan as being a psychiatrist; he digs into people’s brains even though they might be normal, just as Alan dug the pick into the horses’ eyes. The difference is that Alan did it for a reason, but Dysart believes he makes perfectly normal human beings and changes them when changes do not need to be made to their mental state.
In his quest to cure Alan’s mental discomfort, Dysart discovers that he himself is the one who is actually ill. He needs a higher power in his life.

















Works Cited
Burke, Kerith. “Journey Into a Mind”. Wahsington State University website, www.wsu.edu.
March 18, 2010.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton, 1961.
Hay, Mitchell. “Equus: Human Conflicts and the Trinity”. Religion-Online website,
www.religion-online.org. March 15, 2010.
Shaffer, Peter. Equus. New York: Scribner, 1973.
Vasseleu, Cathryn. “The Face Before the Mirror-Stage”. Hypatia Journal, Jstor. March 15, 2010.

Equus

I started and finished Equus on a flight back from New Jersey to LA. I started it and could not put it down. The dialogue was not only fascinating, but was also a fast read because of the way in which it is written. The content of course, is what kept me going. There are so many aspects of the play worth discussing, but I'd like to discuss one of them-- why Alan worships the horse and yet blinds it.
We already know at the beginning of the play what had happened: "He blinded six horses with a metal spike" (Shaffer 12). The audience is shocked right at the beginning when Hesther tells Dystart the problem; the rest of the play is just the audience discovering how that happened. The mental state of Alan is not "normal" according to his parents. He has been strange because of the surroundings he grew up in. However, Dystart discovers that Alan is in fact not abnormal. He gets to know Alan and realizes that he is not crazy but he is only a result of the two people closest to him. While growing up, Alan was banned from seeing movies by his father, and raised with strict christian values by his mother. Alan's problems can be analyzed by Freud's theory in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle". In it, he studies one child whose first actions and games are a direct result of the closest people in his life-- his parents and a servant girl. Similarly, in Equus, Alan's actions of blinding a horse and being petrified of being naked in front of one is a direct result of his childhood. Towards the end, the horse is equated to God or Jesus in Alan's mind. There are several allusions to the bible (God being a jealous God, Eyes like flames like Jesus' eyes are supposed to be --in the book of Revelation, I think). Because he was banned from seeing Western movies on the one hand, and taught religion on the other, he combined the two and made the horse his God. He worshiped the horse in his room and prayed to it. Therefore, it only made sense for him to be ashamed of performing sexual acts in front of one.
In the end, Dystart doesn't seem to be "helping" Alan anymore. He believes he can't help him because Alan does not need any help. He feels sorry for the boy.

Psychoanlaysis

I fould reading Eagleton's version of Freud's theories very interesting. I like the way in which he presents information and outlines Freud's entire realm of theories in a matter of a few pages. I have read various texts by Freud before but Eagleton put everthing together.
One of Freud's most popular theories is that of the Oedipus Complex. I was surprised, however, to read that girls can also have one. I was unaware of this. Eagleton says, "the boy's close involvement with the mother's body leads him to an unconcius desire for sexual union with her, whereas the girls, who has been similarly bound up with the mother and whose first desire is always homosexual, begins to turn her libido towards the father" (Eagleton 134). In other wrods, the girl's sexual tendencies are first always homosexual since she is also breast fed and learns to suck the mother's milk. However, there are so many other things that happen in a little girl's anatomy that are not related to homosexuality or sexuality at all. This is a complicated concept and I'm still trying to fully understand it. Why can a girl not have a mother and daughter relationship? Why does everything for Freud revolve around sexual tendencies? Is this idea universal? Or, was he talking mostly about Western Philosophy?
Though I find Freud's claims generic and broad, I do give him credit for being the first one to put these thoughts on paper. There is no doubt there were other people who had thought about these ideas. But since sex is a touchy subject, people do not want to touch it (no pun intended). He is the reason we have an entire field of psychology. Of course Freud cannot be credited with everything, but I do believe that he was the first one brave enough to write down what other males in Vienna at his time (and at other times elsewhere) were thinking. Before Freud, society would not have had such ways of thinking. But his works also beg the question: would we have fewer people do crimes based on sexual desires? I watch reruns of "Law and Order: SVU" when I get time; this program deals with sexually based offenses. There are some very extreme and perverted cases of sexual abuse, rape, etc. Of course Freud is not responsible for some people becoming creeps; quite the contrary. If Freud didn't publish his works, we would not have been able to assess and analyze people's behaviors and would just call these people (like the ones on SVU) "crazy" rather than seeing their crimes and behaviors as problems and helping them resolve such problems.

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a science of pure phenomena. The aim of phenomenology apparently is to bring us down and back to basics. Eagleton says that it's aim was to return to the concrete, solid, ground. It would provide a method of studying whatever we needed. If we could understand the phenomena, we could analyze the work because we would know the underlying meaning. The meaning would thus transcend beyond the thing itself. This sounds pretty close to Plato's notion of the "ideal". A particular text could connect us to the universal meaning behind what is just on the page. The example Eagleton gives us is that a rabbit is not just a rabbit but the notion and phenomena of a rabbit. Therefore, it should lead us to the universal essence of rabbits. With that in mind, do we look at a phenomenon-- say sacrificial love in Romeo and Juliet and not just look at the play itself but have that be a starting point that leads us to the universal understanding of that kind of love? I would think so since the idea of phenomenology is to take us from the specific to the universal.

The Rise of English

(my blogs are super overdue)

Terry Eagleton begins his essay by saying, "In eighteenth century England, the concept of literature was not confined as it sometimes is today 'creative' or 'imaginative' writing. It meant the whole body of valued writing in society: philosophy, history, essays, and letters as well as poems" (Eagleton 15). Therefore, literature did not just mean fictional writing, but a certain type of writing only meant for the elite. Not everyone was able to read this type of high literature. THroughout this essay, Eagleton discusses the rise of English as a language and more importantly as a discipline and area of study. Intitially, English was not privileged in teaching; Latin was. However, as more people began attending the university, English had to be incorporated into the educational system in Britain. English was no longer seen as a subject fit only for women, workers (blue collar) and those wishing to impress the natives of Oxford or Cambridge. Now English was being read in school and English literature (as we understand it today) was being taught. But with this new development, how did the poeple in power choose which texts to use in teaching? Much like today, which texts students have access to depends on what is chosen by the people in power.