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

In both Equus and Amadeus Shaffer shows madness in his characters. He does this not only to stress the characters disembodied spiritings and state of idea of which they are in. Also, he attempts to cast a blanket over the reviewer it gives the reader the feeling that Shaffer designed the characters to express and reflect the beauty in insanity and to convey the ugliness on normality.Madness, if not out justifiedly divine, is at best preferable to the 20th centurys unmerciful and uninspired sanity, is in this turn tail, as it is so much fashionable philosophizing, alone dependent on a pleasant, aesthetically rational form of delirium 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 serve well for the crime of blinding six horses that he worked with.Equus. surgically probes military mans continu ing fascination with violent forms of belief (Gill 387). Shaffer makes this all so obvious to us. Alan is an schizophrenic young man with no justification and dilemma that essential be dealt with. His therapist Dysart sees that this boy is troubled and can be helped, besides fears that there might be something deeper. Dysart recognizes also that the boy he is treating has experienced a passion to a greater extent ferocious that I feed felt in any second of my life (Real389). Clearly he envies this.In turn Dysart fears that the passion of the boy, not because he cant understand it, entirely because he does. The inference is that, once cured, that is, rid or his divine suffering, Alan will become a dullard like closely 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 header is to go by Shaffers idea of insane.Shaffer wants us to think in the mindset of the boy and see what he se es. He wants us to feel the insane thoughts of Equus and experience the urge to follow to voice, but we must ask 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 dally you are left 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 word 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 thirty-two years Salieri nurses his hate, refusing to be graven images joke and demanding to be remembered, if not in fame, then infamy. Thus, he composes a false apology in which he explains how I rattling 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 die his confessio n is found but not believed. It is dismissed as the raving of a madman (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 string being dangled for us by normality. But positioning such an pick is false. One need not be crazed to live untrammelled by conventional proscriptions. Most of the insane are in every way for more wretched and pitiful than the average man in his quiet despair of humdrum gloom (Clurman 388).