Escapism in Sam Shepard’s The Buried Child

The researcher aims at analyzing the play Buried Child by Sam Shepard through the lens of Freudian Psychoanalysis specifically the concepts of Id, Ego and Libido which are primarily responsible for the deterioration of familial relationships and the resulting breakdown of social norms due to the presence of social taboos practiced such as incest and infanticide. The paper attempts to explain in a qualitative analysis the psychological ramifications of the failure to achieve the American Dream. The play due to its multiple allusions to various myths merits study due to it being a cultural touchstone, which critiques the American notions of individual self-reliance and selfish pleasure. Therefore, this research will contribute to existing scholarship in an effort to enlighten the populace on the dangers of the myths of prosperity and nationhood such as American Dream which engender harsh ramifications.

GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies

The present paper attempts to address Sam Shepard's treatment of American family in Buried Child focusing on 'world construction.' In order to explore the process of world creation in the play, the writers draw on the works of Marie-Laure Ryan, a key theorist in 'possible worlds theory,' one of the orientations in cognitive poetics. Considering Shepard's highlighting of the bonds among the family members figuring in his plays, the interactions of characters with Textual Actual World (henceforth TAW) are of paramount importance and contribute to what Ryan calls 'tellability.' Central to our analysis is the consideration of the characters' private worlds' interactions and their intrafamilial and extrafamilial conflicts. Shepard is also centrally concerned with American (popular) culture and its underlying myths, hence the prominence of the theme of American Dream in his oeuvre. As such, the projection of the characters' wish worlds is central in Shepard's play. Considering these "wish worlds" in terms of possible worlds-theory could be rewarding. Many of these wish worlds, it is argued, hinge on the notion of American family whose consideration by Shepard stems from his interest in the questions of origins, identity, selfhood, and autonomy.

Research on education and psychology, 2023

The schema modes that emerge as a part of the whole can be observed by triggering the non-functional schema and schema patterns. The modes are grouped into four general categories as child modes, parent modes, coping modes, and healthy modes, and also into subgroups within themselves. In this study, dysfunctional parent modes have been tried to be revealed by examining them through the novel, Dear Shameless Death. It is aimed to show the observable coping modes in the study since the modes are registered through coping modes. For this purpose, the document analysis method, which is one of the qualitative research techniques, was used in the study. In the literature, a study in which dysfunctional parent modes were examined in a literary work could not be observed. In the novel about the life of a family, the characters Atiye and Dirmit come to the forefront more. The dysfunctional parent modes that these characters use and their preferred coping modes were revealed in the study. It was found that the modes used are the result of their early life and learning from their family and environment. Based on the novel, Dear Shameless Death, it was observed that literary works can contribute to the literature by using it in different fields such as education, mental health, and sociology.

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2020

This paper highlights and explains the impact of the offstage character, which is widely prevalent in the American drama, on the onstage characters and the audience as well. In the 20th century, American drama is marked by the loss and absence which depict the dark side of American society because of the ramifications of the two World Wars. These consequences are the major reasons behind man’s hopelessness, alienation and failure. With the great development in the field of psychology, at the hand of Sigmund Schlomo Freud in the 19th century, which paved the path for the writers to deeply burrow in the psychological issues that man suffers from in the modern and postmodern era. Consequently, writers, like Shepard, try to examine the hidden issues of their characters by dint of the offstage character in the context of a family that represents the society. These unseen characters have influential roles including; catalyst roles and the proximate cause which uncover the cause of the obl...

International Journal of Research, 2018

The research aims at studying the quest for identity which spans over the life of an American family in Sam Shepard's Play Buried Child. This paper extensively explores and portrays how members of Dodge’s family are struggling with the identity. It also focuses on lack of belongingness, search for roots, and association with past. Almost all the characters in this play are struggling with their identities. They have different identities at different times and are desperately trying to restore and establish their identities. In an attempt to claim their lost identity they resort to violence. It also analyses how various reasons or causes such as: Incest, Infanticide, traumatic effects, Alcoholism and escaping from reality contribute to the identity crisis.

This study describes a theme of dysfunctional family, toxic parenting style, and main character's development in The Kid novel by investigating the representation of dysfunctional family and toxic parenting style. This study also reveals how the protagonist copes with the problems caused by dysfunctional family and toxic parenting style in terms of character development. The research applies semiotic analysis of Saussure and structural approach (Todorov, 1985) requiring the study to focus on syntax, semantic and verbal aspect. As a result, the novel represents dysfunctional family in the way that it is chaotic based on Hunt's perpsective (2014) and toxic parenting style (Buck & Forward, 2002). Moreover, the main character Kevin Lewis deals with the toxic parents and develops as a child to adult character. The parents hurt the child in the way that they are toxic instead of caring with proper nurture. The toxic parents are inadequate to support the family, controlling towards Kevin, physically and verbally abusive. Kevin Lewis has some psychological issues as the effect of having toxic parents; struggling, anxious, stress, traumatic, low self-esteem, unhappy, bulimic and suicidal. He wants to be better, and he struggles to change. He can cope with the issues in the way that he is thoughtful, financeoriented, sympathetic and empathetic. Moreover, he is able to deal with his bulimia well. At the end, he is a happy and functional parent.

ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 2016

Prize-winning Buried Child (1977; revised 1997) resonates so strongly with twentieth-century U.S. literature that it seems to emerge from the earthy, Illinois soil echoing imaginations of writers who have come before. As one of Shepard's "family plays," it recalls the dynamics of family dysfunction familiar to us from Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (1942) and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). As in these plays, damaging guilt and soothing illusions revolve around lost sons and failed dreams. Alcoholic abandon fuels the blame game. Whether fictitious or not, narratives of love, betrayal, and death exert powerful forces on the characters. Yet Shepard's similarly claustrophobic space yields a new crop, a sterile product that may leave his audience scratching the dirt ever more fervently for some hint of redemption, some gratifying signal that life will go on. As nihilistic as the play may seem-usually staged in a deteriorated living room with increasing degrees of dark surrealism-the action nevertheless exhibits an invigorating energy, lodged in its powerful critique of U.S. culture and in the subterranean familial bonds. In conversation with other works of Western fiction and drama, Shepard's play launches an effort reminiscent of O'Neill's and Albee's to investigate the cultural space and time of its own making. From Thanksgiving, to Norman Rockwell, to Pee Wee Reese, iconic referents signal American identity and belonging for this unnamed family, isolated in its own skewed sense of home. Shepard's postwar, nuclear family is nearly intact, with two of three sons and one of two grandsons remaining. We have a shell-shocked patriarch, Dodge, like the playwright's own World War II veteran father, who self-medicates with whiskey, lost amid a family that no longer cares to comfort him. His first word, "catastrophic" (8), tells us the tragic event has already occurred offstage, and we shall be riding the falling action down its steep slide. Alongside, we find what could be one of Albee's emasculating wives, who engages in Waste Land-worthy miscommunication with her mate. In demonstrations of the grotesque and gothic reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor, Halie flaunts her mock preacher-lover, slaps her son's stump, and continues the search for a "good man" (32). A true force of destruction, Halie's narcissistic self-indulgence reaches the proportions of a classical Greek heroine plunked down in Middle America. She effectively obliterates her progeny, declaring her family, "same as if they'd all died" (26). In another act of abstracted infanticide, she evokes her sons Ansel and Bradley, killed or dismembered not on the battlefield (as she morbidly desires), but rather casualties of absurdist events of mob violence and random accident. Prodigal sons Vince and Tilden, the traumatized survivors, prove themselves two candidates for metaphoric burial in the oblivion of misrecognition and neglect. Shepard's stylistic flourishes gesture to the rich tradition of modern drama and fiction in the West. As in Jean-Paul Sartre's existential hell of self-conscious paralysis in Huis Clos/No Exit, the damned characters seem unable to move forward. Samuel Beckett's Endgame provides an evident subtext for sections of the play as well, when Dodge asks Halie whether they are "still in the land of the living" (13). Dodge then proceeds to deconstruct distinctions between good and evil in his Midwestern vernacular: "six of one, half dozen of the other" (32). As in Endgame, unexpected hints of tenderness emerge despite the atmosphere of hostility. Like Nell and Nagg in their ash cans, Tilden openly expresses his affection for Shelly and signals his trust by his confession. Just as Nagg/ Hamm and then Hamm/Clov reverse normal parentage dynamics when the vulnerable parent longs CONTACT

This paper attempts to explore a child abuse, the reason and the effect of the character's psychological development using the theory of psychological development and structural analysis. Two approaches are used in this paper. Those are structural approach and psychology, especially developmental psychology approach. The first approach focuses on literary intrinsic elements. The second approach focuses on the character's psychological development based on the developmental stages and tasks. Those are integrated into a psychological structural analysis. The result shows that child abuse that experienced by David is physical and psychological. He got the first stage of abuse commited by his mother who didn't give him food and the last stage evidenced by some physical abuses when he lived with his mother. The primary reasons of David abuses are disciplinary patterns and he was regarded as a trouble maker.

A review and investigation of current empirical studies and tendencies in the escapism problem is presented. It is also substantiated that the future research projects should be concentrated on designing and validating a fundamental theoretical approach of escapism. The integrative theory should be able to explain the phenomenon in a broader meaning and integrate its two opposite poles — negative and positive escapism.

stekom, 2022

Alice in Wonderland has been a popular movie. Many of the characters have interesting personalities like the Alice is a dependable person, Mad Hatter has erratic emotions, and the white queen is a positive human. This is an interesting phenomenon to observe. The purpose of this study is to explore the Big Five personality (OCEAN) in this movie. This study used descriptive qualitative methods to collect data, classify, identify, and analyze dialogues and monologues in the movie. As a result, this article shows that Neuroticism shows the highest level because the emotional personality is related to conflicts in the movie whose players often change emotions, while Openness to experience is at the lowest point, Alice is given a new opportunity in the movie when she kills the jabberwocky.