Food and Drink Symbol Analysis

The central symbol in Dennis Kelly’s DNA is food and drink, which represent the characters’ isolation from each other and even from their society more generally. Food and drink are largely associated with the quiet but calculating character Phil, who is, at first glance, completely disinterested in everyone and everything around him. Phil’s sole interest is snacks and junk food. Even if he’s sitting silently and ignoring his girlfriend Leah, he’s always seen eating something sweet. When Phil meets up with his group of friends to hatch a plan for how to cover up their collective involvement in their classmate Adam’s death, he is drinking a large Coke—he only sets it down when he opens his mouth to unspool a complicated plan to pin Adam’s demise on someone else. Phil later shares some candy with Leah—the first gesture of warmth or even acknowledgement he’s shown her throughout the entire play. For the most part, Phil uses food to isolate himself, only rarely using it as a way to connect to other people. The individual members of the group at the center of the play feel from each other isolated from each other, but they also need to stick together in order to keep up appearances in the wake of Adam’s death. That contradiction weighs on each of them and compounds their guilt—and Phil’s isolating behaviors around food often symbolize that tension between isolation and connection. The other character associated with food is Adam himself. When Brian and Cathy stumble upon Adam living in the woods near school, they ask him how he’s been surviving, and he admits to eating grass, raw rabbits, and even the carcass of a dead bird. While the cunning and cruel Phil snacks on candy and waffles and chugs sugary soft drinks, Adam eats garbage and roadkill. Once again, food serves as a symbol of isolation. Adam has been cut off from society and is, ultimately, barred from reentry when Phil orders Brian to kill him for real—and his lack of adequate food foreshadows this dark turn of events. What’s more, after compelling Brian to murder Adam, Phil is seen sitting alone in a meadow without a snack for the first time in the play; it seems that his ruthlessness has finally stripped him of his only coping mechanism, for better or worse.