Themes — Power, Conformity & Identity

Building on the themes of responsibility, morality, and guilt, this lesson examines how DNA explores the dynamics of power, the pressure of conformity, and the fragility of identity. These themes are deeply interconnected — power depends on conformity, and conformity erodes identity.

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Power

Types of Power in DNA

Kelly presents several different types of power in the play, and each one fails or corrupts:

Type of power	Character	Outcome
Positional authority	John Tate	Collapses under pressure — he cannot cope
Intellectual authority	Phil	Effective but amoral — power without conscience
Physical intimidation	Cathy	Rises to the top through sheer aggression
Moral authority	Leah	Completely ignored — moral power is worthless
Social conformity	The group	The pressure to belong is the strongest force of all

The Power of Silence

Phil's silence is one of the play's most sophisticated explorations of power:

• Silence as control: By refusing to speak, Phil forces others to fill the void. Leah talks more; the group waits for his instructions.
• Silence as mystique: Because Phil says nothing, others attribute wisdom and strength to him. They project authority onto his blankness.
• Silence as withdrawal from the moral community: Speech is how we negotiate morality with others. By refusing to speak, Phil places himself outside the moral community entirely.

Examiner's tip: Phil's silence is a gift for essay questions about power. Write: "Kelly inverts the conventional association between speech and power. In DNA, it is Phil's silence — not his words — that makes him the most powerful character. His refusal to engage in moral dialogue places him beyond accountability."

The Transfer of Power

The play traces a clear transfer of power across the four sections:

Section 1: John Tate (failing) → Phil (emerging)
Section 2: Phil (dominant)
Section 3: Phil (at his most extreme — proposes murder)
Section 4: Phil (withdrawn) → Cathy (new leader)

This progression is significant:

1. Conventional authority (John Tate) fails first — bluster and threats are not enough.
2. Strategic intelligence (Phil) takes over — but intelligence without morality leads to darker decisions.
3. Pure aggression (Cathy) inherits power — in the absence of moral or intellectual leadership, violence wins.

Examiner's tip: The power trajectory from John Tate to Phil to Cathy represents Kelly's bleak view of how power operates in groups. Each new leader is worse than the last.

Power and the Milgram Connection

Phil's power over the group directly parallels Milgram's findings:

Milgram's obedience study	DNA
Authority figure gives calm instructions	Phil gives calm, precise plans
Subjects obey despite moral discomfort	The group follows Phil despite obvious wrongness
Obedience increases when authority is close	Phil is physically present when giving orders
Subjects blame the authority for outcomes	Characters might blame Phil — but he never forced them

The crucial difference: in Milgram's study, the authority was a scientist in a lab coat. In DNA, the authority is a teenager eating an ice cream. This makes the obedience even more disturbing.

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Conformity

Why Do They Conform?

The group in DNA conforms to Phil's plan even though most members are uncomfortable with it. Kelly dramatises several reasons for conformity:

Reason	Example in DNA
Fear of consequences	If the cover-up fails, they all face criminal charges
Desire to belong	Being part of the group is safer than being outside it
Trust in authority	Phil seems to know what he is doing
Diffusion of responsibility	"Everyone else is going along with it, so it must be OK"
Fear of social exclusion	Challenging Phil risks being pushed out
Gradual escalation	Each step seems small; the cumulative effect is huge

The Escalation of Conformity

Kelly structures the play so that each section requires a greater moral compromise than the last:

Section	What the group must accept
1	Covering up an apparent death — serious but understandable
2	An innocent man arrested — they are harming someone new
3	Keeping Adam hidden / potentially killing him — murder
4	Living with the consequences — permanent moral damage

This is the foot-in-the-door technique in action: once you have agreed to a small compromise, it becomes psychologically easier to agree to a larger one. By Section 3, the group has invested so much in the cover-up that abandoning it feels impossible.

Examiner's tip: Discuss escalation explicitly. Write: "Kelly structures the play so that each moral compromise makes the next one easier — the group is trapped not by external force but by the cumulative weight of their own previous decisions."

Conformity and Language

Kelly uses language patterns to dramatise conformity:

• Characters echo each other's phrases — suggesting groupthink.
• Mark and Jan share sentences — their individual voices merge into one.
• When Phil speaks, others immediately defer — his words become instructions, not suggestions.
• The group's language becomes euphemistic — "deal with" instead of "kill", "finish" instead of "murder".

Examiner's tip: Language choices are key for AO2. Write: "Kelly's use of euphemism — Phil says 'we need to finish this' rather than 'we need to kill him' — shows how language itself becomes a tool of moral evasion. The group can do terrible things as long as they do not name them."

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Identity

Loss of Individual Identity

One of DNA's most powerful ideas is that group membership erodes individual identity. The characters increasingly define themselves through the group rather than as individuals:

Evidence of identity loss	Character(s)
Mark and Jan share sentences	Their individual voices disappear
The group acts as a unit — no one breaks ranks	All
Phil replaces Leah with Richard without concern	Individuals are interchangeable
Cathy's identity merges with her role as enforcer	She becomes her function
Brian's identity is destroyed by guilt	He ceases to function as a person

Adam's Identity

Adam's identity is the play's starkest casualty:

Stage	Adam's identity
Before the play	A person — presumably with a name, a life, interests
During bullying	A victim — defined by what others do to him
After the fall	A "problem" — an obstacle to the group's safety
When found alive	A "threat" — his existence endangers the cover-up
Section 4	Barely human — cannot speak, lives like an animal

Adam's progressive loss of identity is a form of dehumanisation. The group does not need to physically kill him — they have already destroyed his selfhood.

Examiner's tip: Adam's dehumanisation is one of the play's most important themes. Write: "Kelly traces Adam's identity from person to victim to problem to threat to animal, charting a systematic dehumanisation that mirrors real-world processes of othering — from bullying to genocide, the first step is always to deny the victim's humanity."

Leah's Quest for Identity

Leah's monologues can be read as a desperate attempt to assert her own identity in the face of Phil's silence:

• She talks about her thoughts, her feelings, her ideas.
• She asks Phil "what are you thinking?" — trying to establish a shared reality.
• She discusses philosophy and science — trying to prove she is intelligent and worth listening to.
• When Phil refuses to engage, her identity collapses — she threatens self-harm and eventually disappears.

Examiner's tip: Leah's departure can be read as a reclaiming of identity. Write: "Leah's decision to leave in Section 4 may represent the only genuine act of individual agency in the play — by removing herself from the group, she reclaims an identity that Phil's silence and the group's conformity had been slowly erasing."

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Interconnections

These three themes are deeply linked:

Power → demands → Conformity → erodes → Identity
  ↑                                          |
  └──────────── creates ←────────────────────┘
  (Loss of identity makes individuals easier to control)

• Power requires conformity — Phil can only lead if the group follows.
• Conformity erodes identity — following the group means losing your individual voice.
• Loss of identity enables more power — people without a strong sense of self are easier to control.