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.