The Reflection Of Religion In 'Equus' By Peter Shaffer

In the play Equus by Peter Shaffer, a focus is drawn to distraught seventeen-year-old Alan Strang. Alan has a limited education and very few friends; he works at a store on weekdays and at a riding stable on weekends. He had a distant relationship to his atheist father; they did not really get along well. He also grew up under the strong influence of his Christian mother, who only wanted Alan to be happy. Alan’s early religious background has strongly influenced his current religious beliefs; his mental state is therefore affected by displacing his mother’s Christian beliefs onto his own religion with Equus. Memories of Alan’s early exposure to religion have been displaced onto his current beliefs as a teenager. Alan grew up alongside the

His father, being an atheist, strongly believed “religion’s at the bottom of all this,” which to Alan, it was. Alan called his idol “Equus the Godslave, faithful and true” (63). Having heard about God and Jesus constantly while growing up with his mother, he transferred these ideas and how others worshipped them to his own sense of worship, which was to Equus the horse. To summarize, this proves that Alan believes in horses the way that so many people believe in God. To him, this is completely normal but to others, his mental state could easily appear to be

Dysart makes an attempt to get Alan to open up about his religious experiences. Alan states that his god is enduring hardships: “‘They have [Equus] in chains.’ ‘Like Jesus?’” (58). Dysart prods at Alan’s thoughts in an attempt to better understand exactly where these beliefs are coming from; he evidently does find that many of the doctrines in the religion with Equus were evoked from Christianity. This proves that the philosophy behind Alan’s religion was not insane by any means, as there are millions of people who worship Christianity and have the same intent behind the ideals, they simply pertain to different idols or