David Kelly is an instructor of creative writing and drama at two colleges in Illinois. In the following essay, he examines the aspects o/Harvey that its author has left open to mystery and how unattached, unexplained ideas help to bolster the play's central idea.

Mary Chase's time-honored play Harvey is a fun play to read and to perform. It isn't the type of literary work that cries out to be interpreted. In some ways, the play strains to defy interpretation. One of its central subthemes is that interpretation is a hangup that fun-loving people need to ignore. The play shows an eminent psychiatrist and his staff trying to figure out the reason why Elwood P. Dowd, a mild-mannered drunkard, thinks he sees a giant, invisible rabbit, but it gives its audience enough evidence to believe that he sees it because the rabbit, a mystical spirit, actually...