Though Dennis Kelly’s DNA is a fairly straightforward narrative about a group of students who accidentally commit an unspeakable crime, there is also a deeper layer to the play: one which questions the nature of reality and investigates the difference between subjective and objective truth. Throughout the play, Kelly suggests that one’s experience of reality is something individualized and totally subjective based on one’s perceptions of the truth—and that reality can be manipulated to one’s advantage under the right circumstances.
There are several instances throughout the play in which the teenage characters at the center of the action ruminate on the nature of their shared reality—and wonder if what they perceive of the world is actually the truth of the world. Their meditations on the nature of reality and truth become ways for them to excuse horrible, heinous acts, and in this way, Kelly demonstrates how the characters are essentially able to bend the reality around them to their will. The most major instance of a character questioning the nature of reality—and thus changing the nature of their own reality—comes shortly after the group realizes that their classmate Adam isn’t dead. He’s alive but seriously injured, and due to a horrible head wound, he can’t remember who he is. He’s been living in a hedge in the woods for weeks, eating grass, raw rabbits, and bird carcasses to survive. As Phil—the one who came up with the plan to cover up the group’s involvement in Adam’s “death”—realizes that the boy is still alive, he decides that in order to preserve the appearance of the group’s innocence, they must murder Adam for real. Phil’s girlfriend Leah begs Phil not to order the mentally-unstable Brian to kill Adam—or what’s become of him—but Phil responds by asking Leah “what difference […] it make[s]” to kill Adam if everyone in town already believes he’s dead. Phil’s observation in this scene is cruel and evil—but it also reveals a painful and uncomfortable question about the nature of reality. If everyone thinks Adam is dead—if a memorial service has already been held and his “captor” has already been arrested—does killing Adam for real have an impact on anyone other than those involved in the killing? Much like the old riddle of whether a tree falling in an abandoned forest makes any sound at all if that sound cannot be observed or overheard, this scene calls into question the mechanics of how perception creates reality. Phil and the others have constructed a reality in which Adam is dead—and killing him for real makes concrete their careful illusion. When, as the narrative implies, Brian does actually kill Adam, the act will only serve to confirm and cement the reality that the group of teens at the center of the play have already willfully created.
There are other moments throughout the play in which characters question the nature of their realities. Leah, a particularly introspective character, frequently wonders about whether human life is a blight upon the earth and ponders the nature of happiness in her one-sided conversations with her boyfriend Phil. In one scene, she experiences an intense moment of déjà vu which unmoors her briefly from reality and causes her to ask Phil whether he thinks life is a repetition of an earlier state of being, and whether human beings are trapped in a set of patterns and behaviors they cannot see or escape. As Leah questions reality more and more often, she begins to detach herself from the cruel Phil and stand up for herself more frequently. Ultimately, she leaves school and abandons the group. Leah has changed her own reality by altering her perception of it and refusing to doom herself to the idea of being stuck with no agency in an endless loop of repetition.
Ultimately, the characters in Dennis Kelly’s DNA are forced to live with the crushing burden of the knowledge that the reality they live in is a reality they’ve created—the line between objective and subjective truths has, for their group, become forever blurred, and as such the edges of their sanity begin to blur as well. Hardly any of the characters are, at the end of the play, living in the reality in which they existed just a few weeks prior: they have manufactured for themselves new, false versions of their lives.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Reality and Truth ThemeTracker
Reality and Truth 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.
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.
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.
No, no, yeah, no, actually, because that man, the man who, he doesn’t actually, I mean I’m not being fussy or anything, but the man who kidnapped Adam doesn’t actually exist, does he. Well does he?
LEAH: It’s incredible. The change. This place. You’re a miracle worker. Everyone’s happy. […] Funny thing is they’re all actually behaving better as well. I saw Jan helping a first year find the gym. Mark’s been doing charity work, for Christ’s sake. Maybe being seen as heroes is making them behave like heroes.
PHIL considers his waffle. Decides it needs more jam.
Yeah, everyone happy. Well it’s not all roses, you know. Brian’s on medication. […] John Tate hasn’t been seen in weeks, and the postman’s facing the rest of his life in prison, but, you know, omelettes and eggs, as long as you’ve your waffle, who cares.
BRIAN: Don’t they eat earth somewhere? Shall we eat the earth? I wonder what earth tastes like, what do you think it, do you think it tastes earthy, or, or...
He bends down to eat a handful of earth. […]
That’s disgusting!
He suddenly starts giggling as he scrapes the earth from his mouth.
CATHY: I dunno how he’s survived, what he’s eaten.
BRIAN: (Like it’s hilarious) He’s probably been eating earth!
He bursts into laughter.
LEAH: How’ve you been living?
ADAM: In the hedge.
LEAH: No, how?
What have you been eating?
ADAM: You can eat anything. I eat things.
Nothing dead, I don’t
insects, grass, leaves, all good, but nothing, I caught a rabbit once and ate that, its fur was soft, warm, but nothing, I found a dead bird and ate some of that but it made me sick so nothing, nothing dead, that’s the rule, nothing
Beat.
What?
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.
And in that second, Phil, I knew that there was life on other planets. I knew we weren’t alone in the universe, I didn’t just think it or feel it, I knew it, I know it, it was as if the universe was suddenly shifting and giving me a glimpse, this vision that could see everything, just for a fraction of a heartbeat of a second. But I couldn’t see who they were or what they were doing or how they were living.
How do you think they’re living, Phil?
How do you think they’re living?
