The American Dreams in Sam Shepard's Family Trilogy
| Autor: | James Yen-Ho Chen, 陳彥合 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2001 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 89 This thesis is an analysis and assessment of Sam Shepard’s treatment of the American dream in three family plays: Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and True West. As a whole, these three plays, commonly known as his family trilogy, express Shepard’s strong bond with the land and frontier pioneer tradition of the American West and his concern with the present state of American culture. My fundamental argument is this: while Shepherd clearly sees how the traditional American sense of the dream, as a force of strength and self-renewal, has been lost in the contemporary materialistic society, his plays function ultimately to “rediscover” this dream in all its idealistic purity, to show how we may still realize it in an act of personal and/or cultural self-regeneration. Shepard’s family trilogy then can be regarded as a microcosm of his ongoing exploration of the meaning of the “American dream.” Each play criticizes one aspect of this dream while at the same time attempting to (re)embody or (re)enact it. What distinguishes Shepard from his contemporary playwrights is that he not only deconstructs the myth of the American dream but simultaneously presents the possibility of realizing it. Shepard’s writing of the family trilogy can thus be divided into three stages: disillusionment with the dream, aware- ness of one’s own identity within the wider context of that dream, and finally the realization or rediscovery of this dream for oneself, in one’s own life. While the characters in these plays have become in various ways disillusioned with themselves and their families, ques- tioning their individual and cultural meaning and purpose, and try in various ways to escape, nonetheless they are able, having experienced in some form the cycle of death-rebirth, to emerge out of their pasts and look forward to a new life and new understanding in the future. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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