Summary
When asked what happened, Adam says he was in the dark, crawling. With large gaps between his words, Adam says he fell into “this thing,” then woke up with liquid on his head and rotting leaves around him. He saw a light high high up. He drank the liquid and realized it was blood. He crawled a long time through tunnels. He felt like the dark was his fear; he was wrapped in it like it was a soft blanket. He moved toward the light, thinking he was dying. He thought the light would take away the immense pain.
Adam says he was confused to arrive outside. He came out a new version of himself. He felt happy, and it hurt to laugh, but he laughed. He panicked when night came. He ran around scratching his skin. He says he then found the place where he lives now. He says he’s not coming back. Leah asks what he’s been eating. Adam says he’s been eating anything he could find, but nothing dead. A dead bird made him sick, so that’s the rule. He caught a rabbit once and ate that.
Leah informs Adam that he’s supposed to be dead. They’re naming the science lab after him. Brian starts giggling. Leah says she doesn’t know how they’re going to get out of this one. Brian says this is great. Jan, Mark, Lou, and Leah wonder what they’re going to do. Phil asks Adam if he wants to come back with them or stay. When he confirms that Adam is “happy” here in the woods, Phil asks Brian to take Adam back to his hedge. Brian does so, bringing Adam off stage.
Phil tells the others to go home and not say anything about this to anyone. If they do as he says, no one will be in trouble. Jan and Mark leave after nodding. Cathy goes too. Leah asks Phil what he’s doing. She says Adam is mentally unstable and injured, and has been living off insects for weeks. She says he’s insane and needs help. Phil says he is happy and doesn’t want to come back. She says this is insane—they can’t leave him here. Phil says, “I’m in charge. Everyone is happier. What’s more important: one person or everyone?” Leah reminds Phil that they used to go to Adam’s birthdays. Phil says that their lives will be ruined if he comes back.
Brian returns. Ignoring Leah’s reasoning, Phil tells Cathy and Brian they are going to “play a game” with Adam. Phil asks Brian to come to him. He says he’s going to do an experiment with a plastic bag. Brian says he loves experiments. Phil empties the plastic bag and tells Brian to stay still. He places the bag over Brian’s head and pulls the handles around, making it airtight. B breathes the plastic in and out. Phil looks to Cathy, who nods. Phil removes the bag. Brian says, “That was great!” Phil tells him to do what Cathy says.
Leah shouts at Phil to stop. Phil says everyone thinks he’s dead, so what difference will it make? Cathy leaves, taking Brian with her and ignoring Leah’s plea for her to stop. Leah turns to Phil, who ignores her and walks away. The action moves to Phil and Leah sitting in a field. The couple sit in silence while Phil offers a Starburst to Leah. She begins chewing it, crying silently. When Phil puts his arm around her, Leah stands up and spits out the candy. She storms off, leaving Phil to say her name, with no response.
In Scene Four, Jan and Mark are in a street. They discuss the fact that Leah has been gone for a week. No one knows where. Mark says people are saying Leah moved schools, without saying anything. Jan asks if Phil knows. The action moves to a field, where Phil sits staring into the distance. He isn’t eating. Richard is with him. Richard suddenly stands and tries to get Phil’s attention by walking on his hands. Phil pays him no attention.
Richard collapses, brushes himself off, and sits next to Phil. He asks when Phil is planning to come down from the field. He asks if Phil doesn’t get bored sitting up there all day doing nothing. He says everyone’s wondering when Phil is going to come down from the field.
Richard says that John Tate has found God: he hangs out at the shopping center, proselytizing and handing out leaflets. Danny is doing work experience at a dentist’s and hates it because the open mouths make him feel like he is going to fall in. Richard says Brian is on stronger medication and is only ever drooling or giggling. Cathy is now “running things,” and rumor has it she cut off a first-year student’s finger. Lou is her best friend now. Meanwhile, Jan and Mark have started shoplifting.
Richard shakes Phil by the shoulders and says he can’t stay up there forever. Phil doesn’t respond. After a pause, Richard says that a “wind of fluff” blew up when he was walking up the hill. The fluffs of plants were like cotton or wool, and it was like he was in a cloud. It made him feel certain there’s life on other planets, because he was like an alien in a cloud. He asks Phil how he thinks aliens are living. He then says there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Brighton Beach. He asks Phil to come back. Phil doesn’t answer. The play ends with Phil and Richard sitting in silence.
Analysis
In the last section of the play, Kelly has Adam deliver a monologue about how his fall was broken by a pile of leaves and how he miraculously crawled out of the ventilation tunnel and took refuge in a hedge. The theme of fear arises as Adam talks about the terror he felt while crawling through the tunnel. Using a metaphor, he likens the fear to the blanket surrounding him, implying that he derived a strange comfort from facing his fear in the dark tunnel.
The theme of innocence resurfaces when Adam talks about how he emerged from the tunnel as “a new me.” Having lost his memory from the brain injury of the stone hitting his head, Adam was effectively transformed back into a child whose lack of understanding of the world leaves him vulnerable. With no memory of how he ended up the way he did, Adam has forgotten his former tormentors and their culpability in injuring him.
With the revelation that Adam is still alive, the audience and the characters realize no one confirmed that Adam had actually died because they were too busy panicking about how to avoid getting in trouble. If the inconsiderate group had had more empathy, rescuers would have brought Adam to a hospital and the entire conspiracy would have been needless. But despite the miraculous development, the group perceives the fact of Adam’s continued existence to be a nuisance because, if he got his memory back, he’d risk exposing their conspiracy.
The themes of peer pressure and empathy return as Leah appeals to the others to do the right thing and bring Adam back to society so he can get medical help. Phil sinisterly suggests that Adam is happier in his new life, ignoring the evidence of Adam’s brain damage, and he pressures the others to also pretend that everything will be better if no one else knows that Adam has survived.
Kelly builds further on the themes of exploitation and innocence as Phil coldly demonstrates how Brian can suffocate Adam with a plastic bag. Smart enough to know not to get too close to the crime himself, Phil deputizes Cathy to oversee the killing, which exploits Brian’s dissociation; in his heavily medicated state, Brian is completely oblivious about what he is being tricked into doing. Only Leah attempts to put an end to the brutal conspiracy, which has required increasingly cruel and immoral tactics as time has gone on.
In the play’s final scene, Leah has left Phil and moved schools, deciding finally that she is too empathic to tolerate his sociopathy. Richard visits Phil to talk about how things have changed. While the conspirators haven’t been held criminally responsible for their actions, the moral consequences have brought about the dissolution of the friend group, with the more sensitive members either fleeing or going insane, and the least-moral members pursuing criminal paths. In this way, Kelly shows how the pressure the peers put on each other may have protected them from criminal charges but resulted in spiritual ruin.
