Why are the advert jingles Alan recites important to the overall meaning of the play? What do they say about his state of mind and about the state of the modern psyche?

In Equus Alan is singing advertising jingles in his first meeting with Dysart (a psychiatrist). These jingles are in response to Dysart’s questions. Alan is clearly startled when Dysart coolly responds to the jingles as if Alan was speaking normally this helps to show the relationship that Dysart has with his patients to help the audience to see the difference between Dysart and the everyday people we meet through-out the text.

We see very early on that Alan seems to recites the advert jingles as if he were obsessed with TV and shows some foreshadowing on the reader or audience because we know that this is to be a theme that is later continued in order to ‘fill the gaps’ that need to be answered. It is them later carried on when we learn of Alan’s dad, Frank, not allowing him to watch TV therefore we are startled on how Alan is aware of these jingles and get the reader thinking about the overall meaning of the jingles.

These jingles are so important to get into the state of Alan’s minds and see that Alan can in some cases use these jingles to steer away from questions avoiding speaking to people and answering the questions that he being asked. This always shows him distancing himself from the other people.

The jingles show the modern life as being very TV orientated and to the modern audience remembrance of advertisement are not so strange but are seen as a reasonably normal thing for people to remember as TV is a very big thing in our culture.