Passion and Normalcy Anonymous 12th Grade

'"Passion...can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created'" (Shaffer 109). Alan Strang is alone. He lives in a world of his own creation, born of mental illness and isolation, untouched and not understood by the rest of society. The only solace Peter Shaffer has given Alan is his equine god, the titular Equus. Alan is devoted to Equus, intense in his affection, and it is this passion that needs to be extinguished by Martin Dysart in order for Alan to be a healthy, normal, functioning member of society. However, Dysart knows that to take Alan’s passion from him is to take everything he has. Dysart, who is an accepted member of society, knows that a person without passion is hollow, does not really exist in any sense other than the physical, for he himself is passionless. This is the message Shaffer’s Equus attempts to impress, through the foils of Alan Strang and Martin Dysart; that it is necessary to find a balance between passion and normalcy because each is integral to the other, and to happiness and peace of the individual as a whole.

Alan comes from a home of religious contention, with his Christian mother ingraining in him her beliefs of God, and his atheist father viewing everything she says and believes with...