Research Paper – A Devil Inside
Biography
David Lindsay was born on November 20, 1969 in Boston Massachusetts. He lived in the working class section of South Boston, where his father worked in fruit delivery and his mother worked in a factory. He got a scholarship at the age of twelve to attend the prestigious private school Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. He was known for wrestling, but in ninth grade he decided to try out for the school play. He became more active in playwrighting as the years went by. He attended and graduated Sarah Lawrence in 1992 with a degree in drama, but decided that playwrighting was his true passion. He continued to write plays and enter numerous playwrighting contests, many of which he won with honors. He applied and was accepted into the highly prestigious Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. There he was trained by highly acclaimed playwrights Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang. After finishing the program, he began writing professionally, one of his first works being A Devil Inside. Other of his first works include The L’il Plays, Snow Angel, and Fuddy Meers, the latter of which gained him critical acclaim as a new playwright. He came out with another play after a few years of scriptwriting entitled Kimberly Akimbo, which met critical acclaim again. Wonder of the World premiered in 2001 at the Manhattan Theatre Club, which met to mixed reviews. He married Christine Abaire and had a son, Nicholas, who inspired his Pulitzer Prize winning play Rabbit Hole, which was a dramatic turn from his previous absurdist plays.

Synopsis
A Devil Inside tells the story of mixed messages and crazy motives. On Gene’s 21st birthday, Mrs. Slater finally tells Gene the truth about his father’s death: he was murdered and his feet were chopped off. However, Gene is oblivious to the fact that it is the real way his father died because he still believes that he died of a heart attack. Instead of focusing on avenging his father’s death, he puts his energy into trying to impress Caitlin, a girl who takes the same Russian Literature class with him. Unfortunately, she is obsessively in love with their Russian Lit teacher Carl Raymonds, who thinks he is stuck in a Dostoyevsky novel. He believes that a dull repairman is trying to kill him. Then in comes Brad, the dull repairman who took in Lily, a mysterious artist with a foot fetish. It turns out that everyone is interconnected by one small, strange thing. And one by one, everyone starts going crazy. They end up indirectly killing each other, leaving Gene the only one alive and determined to find the killer of his father.
Theme
I wholeheartedly believe that there is no substance to this play. There is no purpose in its writing than to be completely absurd and funny, as far as I see. I do enjoy the language and the kooky characters that he manages to create and intertwine in a complicated network of relationships, but I cannot think of a single message that can be learned by this play. Call me ignorant or too lazy to care, but I simply do not think that there is any substance to this play.
Moral Pivotal Scene The moral pivotal scene is Scene 12 Act 1 where Caitlin and Carl are following Brad in order to murder him. Caitlin is driving, chasing Brad madly at the urging of Carl, but realizes that Brad is heading towards a crowd of people. Carl encourages Caitlin