AS ENGLISH LITERATURE
2000 WORD COURSEWORK ESSAY
EQUUS – COMMENTS ON SECRETS
Quite a number of you are choosing the essay title on comparing secrets in Equus and Spies. Both texts are embedded with secrets but you must be selective and choose the most significant secrets to write your essay on.
Below are some thoughts on secrets and Equus.
The core secret in Equus is Alan’s religion.
This religion developed from the experience Alan had on the beach in act 1, scene 10. Alan became sexually aroused on the horse. Probably so aroused he experienced an orgasm, perhaps his first. He tells Dysart he was six but we can’t rely on this information.
Alan’s sheltered upbringing would not have prepared him for this incredibly intense experience of pleasure. From this moment on Alan – he had only basic sexual education from his mother, strongly influenced by her own strong religious beliefs – needed to repeat this experience.
For him it was living life to the full. It gave him a heightened sensitivity. It made him feel alive. This experience gave meaning and purpose to his very restricted and dull life.
Dysart recognises that what Alan is experiencing is similar to the ecstatic states of consciousness he reads about in his studies of ancient Greece. Dysart is only a tourist and a student of this history. But Alan is living out this experience.
So Alan tries to re create the experience on the horse – probably over many years. And through ritual and liturgy he manages to reach that same intense experience.
And then Jill Morel invites him to work at the stables. Suddenly he has the opportunity not to imitate the experience on the horse. Now he can experience it again first hand.
The years of imitating this experience in his bedroom and the weeks re creating this experience in the stables has completely moulded his sexual life. It has influenced him so much he is unable to carry out a ‘normal’, ‘healthy’ and ‘acceptable’ sexual relationship.
He is so humiliated, ashamed and above all guilty at his betrayal of Equus that he blinds the horses in the stables. And his secret slowly becomes unravelled through Dysart’s consulting room.
