Equus is eighty pages long and took me 40 minutes to read. If that was all I said about it, I would be doing it a great injustice. I picked up play for two reasons: I am a Harry Potter fan and I remembered hearing about Daniel Radcliffe performing as Alan Strang in London, and I love horses, so a play that had anything that had to do with horses sounded like a good fit. I had no idea what I was in for. A quiet Saturday afternoon, which I had planned to just spend reading a little and maybe getting bored, became a quick read and now several weeks of deep thought.
This story is unique in that it centers around two characters, with only a handful of minor characters. From a bystander's viewpoint, it may appear that the two characters- Martin Dysart and Alan Strang- are complete opposites. Psychiatrist and psych patient, man and boy, passionless and passionate, yet quickly a reader begins to realize that they are not total opposites, but much rather two halves of a whole. Martin Dysart is a psychiatrist, but one that has lost meaning in his world. Alan Strang is just a boy, but has found a passion so great that people think that he is crazy. And maybe he is. What else can he be, thinking that horses are watching him, that the horses are his masters? These foils make for a most interesting read, with a conflict that is not person against person so much that it is persons against society.
Martin Dysart is searching for meaning. He wants something to worship once again, like he worshipped the Greek deities of old. He wants passion back in his marriage, to hold the wife he has not kissed in six years. It is a meaning that he won't find. He considers turning from psychology, but knows that it won't help. He considers divorce, but his marriage is simply a thing of so little existence that it would be almost pointless. By the end of the play, one realizes that it is not Alan Strang who is disturbed, but rather his psychiatrist that is in need of help.
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