Themes — Responsibility, Morality & Guilt

DNA is fundamentally a play about moral failure. Dennis Kelly uses a group of teenagers and a single terrible act to explore some of the most challenging questions in ethics: who is responsible when a group acts together? Is it possible to be guilty and not know it? What happens when a society abandons its moral foundations? This lesson examines the three interconnected themes of responsibility, morality, and guilt.

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Responsibility

The Central Question

Who is responsible for what happens to Adam?

This question drives the entire play, and Kelly deliberately makes it impossible to give a simple answer.

Levels of Responsibility

Level	Who is responsible?	For what?
Direct physical harm	The whole group	The original bullying that caused Adam's fall
The cover-up	Phil (plan), Brian (witness), all (complicity)	Framing an innocent man, hiding Adam
Moral responsibility	Everyone who knew and did nothing	Failing to do the right thing
Structural	Phil, then Cathy	Leading the group into deeper moral failure

Diffusion of Responsibility

Kelly dramatises a well-known psychological phenomenon: diffusion of responsibility (also called the bystander effect). When many people are present, each individual feels less personally responsible.

In DNA:

• No single person planned the bullying.
• No single person pushed Adam into the shaft.
• No single person decided alone to cover it up.
• Therefore, everyone can tell themselves it is not their fault.

Examiner's tip: Reference the bystander effect explicitly. Write: "Kelly dramatises the psychological phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility — each character can avoid blame by pointing to the group, yet the collective harm is devastating."

Individual vs Collective Responsibility

Character	How they avoid personal responsibility
Phil	Never acknowledges moral dimension; treats crisis as a problem to solve
John Tate	"Finds God" — transfers responsibility to a higher authority
Cathy	Does not recognise any moral problem
Brian	"I didn't want to" — emphasises coercion
Lou / Danny	They just did what everyone else did
Leah	She questioned it — surely that is enough?
Mark / Jan	They just reported what happened

Examiner's tip: A Grade 9 response would argue that every character's excuse is simultaneously valid and insufficient. Brian was coerced — but he still testified. Leah questioned it — but she did not act. Kelly shows that moral responsibility cannot be delegated.

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Morality

The Play's Moral Framework

DNA does not present a clear moral authority. Unlike Shakespeare's plays, where divine order provides a moral backdrop, Kelly's world has no external moral framework:

Moral authority?	In DNA
God / religion	Absent until John Tate "finds God" — and even this seems like avoidance
Parents / adults	Completely absent — no adults appear in the play
Law / police	The police are fooled by the cover-up — the system fails
Conscience	Only Leah engages with moral questions — and she is ignored
Social norms	The group creates its own norms, which are corrupt

The absence of adults is crucial. These teenagers exist in a moral vacuum — there is no one to guide them, correct them, or hold them accountable.

Examiner's tip: The absence of adults is a deliberate structural choice. Write: "Kelly removes all external moral authority from the play — no parents, no teachers, no functioning police — to explore what happens when young people must construct their own moral framework under extreme pressure. The result is catastrophic."

Moral Relativism vs Moral Absolutes

The play raises the question: are some things always wrong, regardless of circumstances?

Absolutist view	Relativist view
Covering up a death is always wrong	They were scared teenagers acting under extreme pressure
Framing an innocent man is always wrong	They did not intend to hurt anyone — it was survival
Abandoning Adam is always wrong	They did not know what else to do

Kelly does not resolve this tension. The play presents the consequences — Brian's breakdown, Adam's dehumanisation, the group's collapse — and allows the audience to judge.

The Banality of Evil

A concept from political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the banality of evil describes how ordinary people can commit terrible acts through bureaucratic indifference rather than deliberate malice.

In DNA:

• Phil is not a monster — he is a teenager who eats ice cream.
• Brian is not evil — he is coerced.
• The group does not set out to destroy Adam — they just want to avoid getting into trouble.

Yet the cumulative effect of their ordinary, self-interested decisions is monstrous.

Examiner's tip: Referencing Arendt's "banality of evil" is a sophisticated move. Write: "Kelly presents the group's moral failure as banal rather than dramatic — no one cackles or schemes; they simply prioritise convenience over conscience, and the result is devastating."

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Guilt

Who Feels Guilty?

Not everyone in DNA experiences guilt equally:

Character	Guilt level	Evidence
Brian	Extreme	Crying, breakdown, inability to function
Leah	Significant	Philosophical anguish, self-harm threats, departure
John Tate	Moderate	Seeks religious redemption
Richard	Minimal visible	Reports events matter-of-factly
Phil	None visible	Eats, stays silent, walks away from Adam
Cathy	None	Enjoys the situation; becomes more aggressive
Danny / Lou	Unclear	Withdraw into each other

Brian's Guilt

Brian is the play's clearest example of guilt as psychological destruction. His trajectory:

1. Section 1: Crying, hysterical — immediate emotional response to the crisis.
2. Section 2: Forced to give false testimony — his guilt now has a concrete cause.
3. Section 3: Increasingly unstable — the weight of his lies is crushing him.
4. Section 4: Complete mental breakdown — he has been destroyed by guilt.

Brian's guilt is significant because it is proportional but not redemptive. He feels terrible, but his guilt does not lead him to confess, to help Adam, or to resist Phil. Guilt without action is merely suffering.

Phil's Absence of Guilt

Phil's apparent lack of guilt is one of the play's most disturbing features. There are two possible readings:

Interpretation	Evidence
Phil genuinely feels nothing	His silence, his eating, his calm, his walking away from Adam
Phil suppresses his feelings completely	His silence could be the sound of extreme repression

Examiner's tip: Offering both interpretations is a Grade 9 strategy. Write: "Kelly leaves Phil's inner life ambiguous — his silence could represent genuine amorality or extreme emotional repression. Either reading is deeply troubling: if he feels nothing, he is monstrous; if he feels everything but acts anyway, he is something worse."

Guilt and the Audience

Kelly also makes the audience complicit:

• We watch the group's decisions unfold.
• We may understand their fear and even sympathise with their desire to avoid consequences.
• We may recognise that we, too, might be tempted to do the same.

This is Kelly's masterstroke — the play does not allow the audience comfortable moral distance. It forces us to ask: what would I do?

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The Innocent Man

One of the play's most important moral dimensions is the framing of an innocent person:

• The group plants DNA evidence to frame a man who lives on Phil's street.
• This man is arrested, and his life is presumably destroyed.
• The group barely discusses this man — he is an abstraction to them.
• His fate is a direct consequence of their actions, yet they feel no responsibility towards him.

Examiner's tip: The innocent man is a powerful example of dehumanisation. Write: "Kelly shows that the group dehumanises not only Adam but also the framed man — he is never named, never discussed as a person, reduced to a function in Phil's plan. This casual erasure of another person's humanity is as disturbing as the original crime."

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Key Quotes for These Themes