DNA: Overview (AQA GCSE English Literature): Revision Note
Exam code: 8702
DNA: Overview
The DNA question is part of Paper 2, Section A of your GCSE examination. You are expected to write one essay-length answer to one set question and, unlike with the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions, you will not be given an extract from the text. This can seem daunting at first, but this page contains some helpful information, and links to more detailed revision note pages, that will enable you to feel confident answering any question on DNA. This page includes:
Who is Dennis Kelly?
A summary of DNA
A brief overview of what is required in the exam
DNA characters
DNA context
DNA themes
DNA quotes
Top tips for the highest grade
Who is Dennis Kelly?
Dennis Kelly is an English playwright and screenwriter, born in London in 1970 to Irish parents and brought up on a council estate in Barnet. He left school at sixteen and came to writing later. His plays tend to put ordinary people under extreme pressure and show what they do next.
DNA was commissioned in 2007 for Connections, the National Theatre’s annual festival of new plays for young performers, and was first performed at the National Theatre in 2008. It was written to be staged by teenagers, which is one reason the cast is large, the scenes are short and the language is deliberately unpolished.
Kelly has said he wrote DNA in response to Western foreign policy after the attacks of 2001 and 2005, and that he wanted to look at how fear can push a group into groupthink. This is why the play never names its town or its year: the group is meant to stand for society as a whole. For more on the ideas behind the play, see the DNA: Context page.
DNA summary
DNA is a play by Dennis Kelly, first performed in 2008. It moves between three settings — a street, a field and a wood — and follows a group of teenagers who have done something terrible and then have to decide what to do about it.
The play opens with Mark and Jan discussing, almost casually, the death of a boy they know. In the wood, the group learns that Adam, a boy from school, is dead. Mark and Jan describe what happened as a prank that went wrong, though what they actually describe is sustained abuse: Adam was burnt, stoned and forced into dangerous acts, ending with a fall from a grille. Their leader, John Tate, tries to control the group by banning the word “dead”, and when that fails, Phil — silent until now — takes over.
Phil’s plan is to lie. The group will invent an attacker and plant DNA evidence, and an innocent postman is arrested as a result. Leah, who talks constantly and is the only character searching for meaning, is increasingly troubled, and Brian is threatened into going along with it.
Then Adam is found in the wood, alive but confused. The group is offered a chance to put things right, and Leah wants to take it. Phil refuses: Adam is already believed to be dead, and his return is a threat. Phil instructs Cathy on how to kill Adam, and demonstrates by tightening a plastic bag around Brian.
At the end of the play, the consequences are unequal. Cathy leads a gang and has come to like violence, Mark and Jan drift into petty crime, Brian’s mental health collapses and John seeks refuge in religion. The secret is never discovered. Only Leah gets away, which answers the question she asks Phil earlier in the play — whether people are “doomed to behave like people before us did”. Phil is left alone on the field.
For a more detailed summary, please see the DNA: Plot Summary page.
How is DNA assessed in the exam?
Paper 2 requires you to answer four questions (three on poetry) in 2hrs 15min. That means you have approximately 45 minutes to plan, write and check your DNA essay
Paper 2 is worth 96 marks and accounts for 60% of your overall GCSE grade
The DNA essay is worth 34 marks in total, because it also includes 4 marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar
Section A of Paper 2 contains the DNA question and you are required to answer only one of the two printed questions on the play
Unlike the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions, you will not receive an extract of the play in your exam
It is also a closed-book exam, which means you will not have access to a copy of the text in your exam either
You will be asked a question that asks you to analyse and write in detail about an aspect of DNA
For a much more detailed guide on answering the DNA question, please see our revision notes on How to Answer the Modern Prose and Drama Essay Question.
DNA characters
The characters you should focus on when revising DNA are:
Leah
Phil
Adam
John Tate
Cathy
Brian
Mark
It is always vital to remember — when considering DNA, or any text — that characters are deliberate constructions created by a playwright for a purpose. These characters often represent ideas, or belief systems, and a writer like Kelly uses them to explore those ideas. For more details, please see the DNA: Characters revision notes page.
DNA context
Understanding how to include context in a GCSE essay is challenging, so it is first necessary to figure out what examiners really mean when they talk about context. They define context not as historical information, or biographical facts about a writer, but as the ideas and perspectives explored by a writer through their text. Therefore, the DNA context you should explore in your essay response is not a history of the National Theatre, or facts about Dennis Kelly’s own life, but ideas about:
Fear and groupthink
Mob mentality
Nihilism
Lots of these ideas and perspectives are still relevant today, so your own opinions on them are valid, and examiners welcome them in an essay. For a detailed breakdown of the contextual topics listed above, see the DNA: Context page.
DNA themes
Understanding the themes that are prevalent in DNA will enable you to reach the highest levels of the GCSE mark scheme. This is because to be rewarded top marks on your essay, you need to take what examiners call a “conceptualised approach”: a detailed and perceptive exploration of Kelly’s ideas and intentions. The main themes explored by Kelly in DNA are:
Bullying and violence
Innocence and sin
Truth and reality
Responsibility
You are encouraged to explore other themes that Kelly examines in his play, because bringing original ideas when interpreting a text is always rewarded highly at GCSE. However, the above list makes a great place to start, and detailed breakdowns of each of these themes can be found on our DNA: Themes page.
DNA quotes
It is of course important to learn quotations for your DNA exam question, especially since it is a closed-book exam and you will not have a printed extract on your paper. However, it is worth stating here that examiners value “references” to the play just as highly as direct quotations: this is when students pinpoint individual moments in the play, rather than quoting what the characters say. In order to select references really successfully, it is extremely important that you know DNA itself very well, including the order of the events that take place. This detailed act-by-act breakdown of the plot will help you to revise the chronology of DNA.
Of course, it is also useful to revise a few — very well selected — quotations from the play that can be used in a variety of essays on different themes and characters. Luckily, we have made that selection for you! For a detailed analysis of each of these quotations, see our DNA: Key Quotations page, and for quotations grouped by character see the DNA: Character Quotations page.
Top tips for the highest grade
Please see our revision pages on the Modern Prose and Drama exam for guides on:
Sources
Kelly, D. (2021). DNA. Bloomsbury Publishing (edited by Clare Delijani).
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