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An Essay On Equus - Term Papers

An Essay On Equus

Equus is as complex as the human mind. Exploring psychological questions such as what does it mean to be normal, and should individuality be sacrificed for the sake of normality? Whilst propelling a mystery, crime story, and a psychological thriller, Peter Shaffer’s Equus examines the minds of a young stable boy who has blinded several horses and the aging psychiatrist asked to “cure” him. But would a “cure” really normalize the teenager?
A seventeen year old boy, Alan is brought to a psychiatric hospital because he has blinded six horses with a hoof pick. Dysart, a psychiatrist, works to “normalize” the boy, feeling that as he makes the boy “safe” for society, he is taking away his ...

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Equus leaves - if he lives at all - it will be with
your intestines in his teeth...I’ll give him the good, normal
world...and give him normal places for his ecstasy...
Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor it cannot
be created.”
Pages 92 & 93*

Alan’s love for horses develops into devotion, a religious passion for the horses as all-powerful Gods. As Dysart envies Alan’s passion for horses, a type of passion that he knows he will never feel, he questions his livelihood as a healer. He is healing nothing by removing the boys worship and faith. Is it right or worthwhile to try to “normalize” Alan when what others consider his infatuation with horses, he considers his religion.

Dysart: What am I trying to do to him?
Hesther: Restore him, surely?
Dysart: To what?
Hesther: A normal life.
Dysart: Normal?
Hesther: it still means something.
Dysart: Does it? page 47*

Shaffer employs to the reader that there is ...

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An Essay On Equus. (2005, September 14). Retrieved January 11, 2026, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/An-Essay-On-Equus/33291

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 9/14/2005 10:59:09 PM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 710
Pages: 3

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