Sam Shepard Question

[MTVMANN]

Posted: 4/3/06 at 3:40pm

I have a report on Sam Shepard and I wanted to ask some questions.

First of all, I'm only familiar with one play, "A Lie of the Mind", but I do think that most of his plays center around certain themes and ideas, right? If so, What are they?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/3/06 at 3:54pm

He's very big on the conflicts between fathers and sons and between brothers (he's not really big on women). We frequently see sons being disappointed by their fathers -- fathers are supposed to pass on a legacy, but contemporary realities (and personal failings; you can ask the question in a couple of the plays "How can one truly become a man when the person charged with teaching you to do that -- the father -- is a failure and not much of a man himself?") make that impossible and the sons are left to fend for themselves in the world. This all relates to a main theme that goes through several of his works -- it's the symbolic hope that the West and its land and open spaces represents and how modern commercial society has undermined that. The free untamed West (and the myth of the cowboy) symbolizes the American Dream to Shepard and its destruction winds up leaving some of his characters aimless, drifting and unsure of the future.

That's just off the top of my head. I'll leave it to others to fill in the blanks.

Updated On: 4/3/06 at 03:54 PM

[Gothampc]

Posted: 4/3/06 at 5:38pm

Margo pretty well summed it up. "Fool for Love" and "True West" have the same themes.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/3/06 at 5:47pm

Some of those themes are also in Buried Child, Curse of the Starving Class, Cowboy Mouth and A Lie of the Mind.

[MTVMANN]

Posted: 4/3/06 at 6:13pm

Thank You So Much! That's really what I was looking for!

[MTVMANN]

Posted: 4/4/06 at 3:00pm

Anyone else? :)