students by teachers and shows the absolute accuracy of a remark he never meant to be true. She accuses him of figurative rape and shows how everything he has said and done, every casual familiarity, every patronizing gesture, can be quoted in support of her accusation. She reduces John to a helpless, confused creature without refuge or context.
Martin Dysart, the protagonist in Equus (1974), begins the play uncertain and confused. He has been having dreams in which he sees his job as carving up children, eliminating their individuality in order to make them more normal. He is presented with the case of a 17-year-old boy, Alan Strang, who blinded six horses with a metal spike, and, in the course of discovering why, he faces his own doubts about what he is doing with his life.
Dysart describes his condition at the start of the play as being in a kind of Aprofessional menopause.@ In many ways, John is in exactly the same state, though he is blissfully unaware of his condition. The phrase is especially useful in understanding both characters, implying an
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