Bullying, peer pressure, and the destabilizing effects of groupthink are at the core of Dennis Kelly’s DNA. Over the course of the play, Kelly examines a group of particularly cruel, emotionally detached teens—save for a few kind, empathetic members—and puts on full display the ways in which they cajole, coerce, and threaten one another. Ultimately, Kelly shows that bullying is an epidemic—and argues that the effects of peer pressure and conformist groupthink lead to terrible instances of emotional and physical abuse amongst young people.
Dennis Kelly’s play is a topical one: DNA wrestles with big issues and takes very seriously the effects that bullying has not just on individuals but on communities more broadly. As Kelly shows how groupthink and peer pressure fuel and perpetuate bullying—and how the more bullying happens, the more socially acceptable it becomes—he paints a portrait of a vicious cycle of abuse. Early on in the play, before the group’s cruelty is even revealed in full, Kelly shows how peer pressure and groupthink in the form of coercion affect this ostensibly tight-knit group of friends. As the nervous Lou and Danny and the overconfident John Tate discuss their schoolmate Adam’s supposed death in vague terms, Lou begins to get scared and declares that they’re all doomed. John Tate—desperate to stop his friend from spiraling into anxiety, worried she’ll turn against him—reminds her that he is one of the most frightening, influential people at school. He urges her and Danny—by vaguely threatening violence—to hush up and follow his plan. Before the audience even knows the truth of what’s going on, Kelly is already at work demonstrating that the environment these teens live in is one that revolves around fear, coercion, and conformity. The individual members of the group are silenced by other members who use cruel tactics to stay in power. Kelly implies that this climate of constant fear, combined with the repeated suggestion that as long as the group sticks together they’ll be all right, is what perpetuates the teens’ constant bullying of and cruelty toward one another. As the play continues to unfold, he uses a tragedy that occurs at the heart of the group to show the devastating effects of this vicious cycle.
As Kelly reveals the horrific truth of the bullying Adam endured at the hands of his so-called “friends,” he delves even deeper into the ways in which groupthink and conformity proliferate and even escalate bullying. As the nervous gossipmongers Mark and Jan unspool the story of Adam’s supposed death, they describe the escalation of their group’s collective cruelty towards Adam over the course of an undetermined amount of time. The abuse they describe could have unfolded over weeks or months—or it could have ramped up from lighthearted dares to physical abuse over the course of one night. Mark and Jan describe fairly benign (but still humiliating) dares such as encouraging Adam to eat leaves and convincing Adam to steal liquor for the group—but their recollection of events soon intensifies as they describe putting out cigarettes on various parts of Adam’s body and eventually stoning him with small rocks as he balanced precariously on a grille over a mine shaft, a torturous ordeal which ultimately led to him falling into the deep shaft. This harrowing passage represents the ways in which groupthink leads to senseless violence. Jan and Mark try to excuse their behavior by stating that Adam was laughing and joking along even as such terrible things were being done to him—and Kelly bleakly suggests that even Adam’s complicity in furthering his own abuse is the product of bullying and groupthink’s endless, repetitious cycle of violence.
Perhaps the most potent example of groupthink in the play is the way in which the members of the group respond to Phil’s plan to distance themselves from being associated with Adam’s “murder” and instead frame someone else. The teens at the heart of the play are so desperate to avoid being held accountable for Adam’s death that they unthinkingly go along with Phil’s elaborate—and eerily thorough—plan for framing someone else for Adam’s death. Some of the kids even take Phil’s suggestions further than he intended them to go, such as when Cathy actually goes to a post office and collects DNA from a man resembling the description of Adam’s “murderer,” which Phil came up with on a whim. The teens’ willingness to submit so wholly and unthinkingly to groupthink reveals their fear of facing the kind of bullying and violence that Adam faced—but it also shows how going along with that very bullying and violence has made them more susceptible to other kinds of conformity that are just as harmful.
Kelly’s play is dramatic, over-the-top, and often quite funny—but the message at its heart is deadly serious. In DNA, Kelly warns of the vicious cycle of cruelty and abuse that can occur when peer pressure and groupthink engender violent bullying and deception.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Bullying, Peer Pressure, and Groupthink ThemeTracker
Bullying, Peer Pressure, and Groupthink Quotes in DNA
Do I disgust you? I do. No, I do. No don’t because, it’s alright, it’s fine, I’m not gonna, you know, or whatever, you know it’s not the collapse of my, because I do have, I could walk out of here, there are friends, I’ve got, I’ve got friends, I mean alright, I haven’t got friends, not exactly, I haven’t, but I could, if I wanted, if I wanted, given the right, given the perfect, you know, circumstances.
You’re not scared. Nothing scares, there, I’ve said it; scared. Scared, Phil. I’m scared, they scare me, this place, everyone, the fear, the fear that everyone here, and I’m not the only one, I’m not the only one, Phil, I’m just the only one saying it, the fear that everyone here lives in, the brutal terror, it scares me, okay, I’ve said it and I am not ashamed.
JOHN TATE: Alright. New rule; that word is banned.
[…]
LOU: You can’t ban a word.
JOHN TATE: and if anyone says it I’m going to have to, you know, bite their face. Or something.
DANNY: How can you ban a word?
JOHN TATE: Well just say it then.
Pause.
Say it and see what happens.
They say nothing.
Look, we have to keep together. We have to trust each other and believe in each other. I’m trying to help. I’m trying to keep things together.
JOHN TATE: Are you on my side? With Richard and Danny? Are you on our side, Cathy?
CATHY: Yes.
JOHN TATE: Good. Lou?
LOU: Yes.
JOHN TATE: You’re on our side, Lou?
LOU: Yes, John.
JOHN TATE: You sure?
LOU: Yeah, I’m –
JOHN TATE: That just leaves you, Brian. You crying little piece of filth.
Beat. BRIAN stops crying. Looks up.
BRIAN: I think we should tell someone.
JOHN TATE begins to walk towards BRIAN.
And you’re thinking ‘Will he do anything? What won’t he do?’
And someone’s pegged a stone at him. Not to hit him, just for the laugh.
And you shoulda seen his face, I mean the fear, the, it was so, you had to laugh, the expression, the fear...
So we’re all peggin them. Laughing. And his face, it’s just making you laugh harder and harder, and they’re getting nearer and nearer. And one hits his head. And the shock on his face is so...funny. And we’re all just...
just...
really chucking these stones into him, really hard and laughing and he slips.
And he drops.
He’s not joking, he’s not going, he’s said he’s not going, I said you’ve gotta go, he said he’s not going, ‘I’m not going’ he said.
No, I’m just wondering. I mean what is happy, what’s happy all about, who says you’re supposed to be happy, like we’re all supposed to be happy, happy is our natural, and any deviation from that state is seen as a failure, which in itself makes you more unhappy so you have to pretend to be even happier which doesn’t work because people can see that you’re pretending which makes them awkward and you can see that they can see that you’re pretending to be happy and their awkwardness is making you even more unhappy so you have to pretend to be even happier, it’s a nightmare.
Everything’s much better, though. I mean really, it is. Everyone’s working together. They’re a lot happier. Remember last month, Dan threatened to kill Cathy? well yesterday I saw him showing her his phone, like they were old friends. Last week Richard invited Mark to his party, bring a friend, anyone you like, can you believe that? Richard and Mark? Yep. Everyone’s happier. It’s pouring into the school, grief, grief is making them happy.
PHIL: You’re going in.
BRIAN: No.
PHIL: Yes.
BRIAN: No, Phil –
PHIL: Yes, yes, shhhh, yes. Sorry. You have to go in. Or we’ll take you up the grille. […] We’ll throw you in.
RICHARD: Er, Phil.
DANNY: Is he serious?
LEAH: He’s always serious.
PHIL: We’ll take you up the grille now. Well get you by the arms. By the legs. And we’ll swing you onto the grille. We’ll throw rocks at you until you drop through. You’ll drop through. You’ll fall into the cold. Into the dark. You’ll land on Adam’s corpse and you’ll rot together.
BRIAN: That was great!
PHIL: You just do what Cathy says.
BRIAN: I am brilliant at doing what people say.
LEAH: No! Stop, don’t, don’t, Phil, don’t, what are you doing, what are you...
PHIL: He’s dead, everyone thinks he’s dead. What difference will it make?
She stares at him.
LEAH: But he’s not dead. He’s alive.
Everyone’s asking after you. You know that? Everyone’s saying ‘where’s Phil?’ ‘what’s Phil up to?’ ‘when’s Phil going to come down from that stupid field?’ ‘wasn’t it good when Phil was running the show?’ What do you think about that? What do you think about everyone asking after you?
John Tate’s found God. Yeah, Yeah I know. He’s joined the Jesus Army, he runs round the shopping centre singing and trying to give people leaflets. Danny’s doing work experience at a dentist’s. He hates it. […] Brian’s on stronger and stronger medication. They caught him staring at a wall and drooling last week. […] Cathy doesn’t care. She’s too busy running things. You wouldn’t believe how things have got, Phil. She’s insane. She cut a first year’s finger off, that’s what they say anyway.
Doesn’t that bother you? Aren’t you even bothered?
