equss vs amadeus by peter shaffer Essay -- essays research papers

In both Equus and Amadeus Shaffer shows insanity in his characters. He does this not provided to stress the characters feelings and state of mind of which they are in. Also, he attempts to cast a blanket over the reader it gives the reader the feeling that Shaffer designed the characters to express and shine the beauty in insanity and to convey the ugliness on normality.Madness, if not out rightly divine, is at best preferable to the 20th centurys ruthless and uninspired sanity, is in this play, as it is so much fashionable philosophizing, totally dependent on a pleasant, aesthetically rational form of mental unsoundness for the credibility of its argument (Richardson 389). Shaffer brings us into these feelings with the story of Alan Strang, a seventeen-year-old British boy. He has been sent to Rokeby Psychiatric Hospital in southern England to get help for the plague of blinding six horses that he worked with.Equus. surgically probes mans continuing fascination with violent form s of belief (Gill 387). Shaffer makes this all so obvious to us. Alan is an unrestrained young man with no justification and quandary that must be dealt with. His therapist Dysart sees that this boy is troubled and can be helped, but fears that there skill be something deeper. Dysart recognizes also that the boy he is treating has experienced a passion more ferocious that I have felt in any endorse of my life (Real389). Clearly he envies this.In turn Dysart fears that the passion of the boy, not because he cant understand it, but because he does. The inference is that, erst cured, that is, rid or his divine suffering, Alan will become a dullard like most normal people (Clurman 388). Shaffer is trying to illustrate that normality is not good, but bad and that the only way to be divine is this state of mind is to go by Shaffers idea of insane.Shaffer wants us to think in the mindset of the boy and see what he sees. He wants us to feel the insane thoughts of Equus and experience t he urge to follow to voice, but we must look at our selves what divine spirit is this we see? There is nothing to it but the pure crazed madness of a boy. After reading the play you are leftfield feeling sorry for the poor soul because he was never able to fit into society and the normality, but hear he is being forced into it. Shaffer uses the vocalise insane is strong context because as the author he has cont... ...ely worthless, Salieri survives only to see himself become extinct as Mozarts posthumous reputation increases. For xxxii years Salieri nurses his hate, refusing to be Gods joke and demanding to be remembered, if not in fame, then infamy. Thus, he composes a false confession in which he explains how I really murdered Mozartwith arsenicout of envy Then, as the sun rises and the play draws to its conclusion, he cuts his throat with a razor. Again, however, Salieri fails. He does not pass by his confession is found but not believed. It is dismissed as the raving of a m adman (Morace 39).Shaffer ends off leaving us with our mouths wide open, craving more of the story like bees after honey, more of the tale told by the insane old man. This story of the insane from the eyes of the insane also makes it seem as if the norm is insanity and we are all but puppets with our strings being dangled for us by normality. But positioning such an alternative is false. One drive not be crazed to live untrammeled by conventional proscriptions. Most of the insane are in every way for more piteous and pitiful than the average man in his quiet despair of humdrum gloom (Clurman 388).