Incest and Infanticide in Sam Shepard's 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.

The main aim of this paper is to study both these American dramas, their similarities and contradictions based on the anomalous and erratic behavior especially in the rural families. This paper intends to scrutinize the unusual and abnormal interaction among the family members. Fate plays an important role as it affects the family as observed in both of the works of these American dramatists Eugene O'Neill and Sam Shepard. A glimpse into their lives shows that their works have been equally affected. O' Neill's characters live alternating lives and some link has been busted between all these characters themselves, which includes the past both mythical and historical. America is shown to be deracinated and these so called myths have been developed into fantasies and dreams. The families depicted in the plays of Shepard usually deal with the themes of hereditary, escalating disintegration and the alienation of the American family. Shepard's plays also include culture other than the family factor. The character of the father figure in both these plays and their personalities help one in understanding and comparing both these dramas. Parallels have been drawn between these dramas and Greek Mythology.

2015

Sam Shepard’in aile ile ilgili oyunlari bir aile icindeki farkli iliskiler acisindan ele alinabilir: esler arasi, baba-ogul arasi, anne-kiz arasi veya kardesler arasi. Ancak butun bunlar arasindan baba-ogul arasi catisma en sancili olanidir ve erken oyunlarindan son oyunlarina kadar yazarin oyunlari tekrar tekrar baba-ogul iliskilerini inceler.Nesilden nesile gecen ailevi mirasin varligi o denli gucludur ki ailedeki herkes adeta lanetlenmis gibidir. Birey kendi koklerinden ne kadar uzakta yasasa da veya iyi bir egitim alsa da, sonuc degismez. Suc veya ahlaksizlik kalitsal ozelliklere kazinmis gibidir; temelde ailedeki herkes bu laneti bir sekilde miras alir. Bu nedenle, Shepard’in karakterleri ofke ve kin doludur ve iyi bir taraftan soz edilemez. Yazar gercek yasaminda, annesine sempati besledigini ancak babasindan nefret ettigini acikca belli eder. Bu makale, Shepard’in yasami yani sira oyunlarinda da ailevi mirasin ve baba-ogul catismasinin ne denli siddetli oldugunu ortaya koymay...

2009

Abstract Sam Shepard is not just a “western essayist", but one who has the capacity to assess contemporary American culture through the symbols and topics of conventional Western American writing. His plays follow the liquidation of American society, in which characters are no more coordinated into their reality by adherence to habitual qualities and standards. Shepard raises the icons of this convention to send them slamming from a more prominent stature, delineates the whole-world destroying end of customary American society in which long-held qualities, especially those celebrated in Western American writing, are ceremonially exorcized to make space for some new, up till now unheard of America. Shepard's plays don't advance sequentially to these ends. Shepard, depicts the search for home within contemporary American culture. In this paper, we are focusing on Shepard’s selected plays to depict the failure of family reintegration into Home or Family. Shepard’s Fourteen Hundred Thousand (1967), The Unseen Hand (1972) and Mad Dog Blues (1972). Fourteen Hundred Thousand – is a play about Husband and Wife who tries to build a bookshelf. The Unseen Hand – is a play about Morphan brothers who lives far away from

Palarch’s Journal Of Archaeology Of Egypt/Egyptology, 2020

This paper attempts to uncover the deleterious effects of mothers on their families and society as a reaction to their mistreatments. Mothers, who are considered as the backbone of the family, have an immense influence on the direction, attitude, and aspirations of the family for monitoring the core social institution, which is the family. The two literary works of Shepard and Al Aswany are analyzed in terms of Modernism in which women are no longer confined to home. Thus, this paper is conducted in the light of Charles Klotsche’ The Silent Victims: The Aftermath of Failed Children on Their Mothers' Lives (2000). Mothers are not only created to adjust and instill human behavior, cultural criterion, and social conduct and ideology via familial communication in her family members, but also to feel their humanity and be luminaries within their families. Mother, in both societies, fails in her revered mission to be the basic ground from which springs a promising family in the society due to being marginalized by her mate. She becomes a victim in her family by her man and a reaction she turns to be a culprit via ignoring her responsibilities towards her family members and society. The view of society is still negative as the culpability will be on mothers, only when their offspring fail in their lives, regardless of considering the main reasons for deviating mothers from the standard code of motherhood.

Material Culture Approaches to the Study of Children and Childhood in the Roman World, 2010

This chapter presents a case study examining how children of different age groups were treated in death.

2014

The play The American Dream presents a useless existence of an individual in the world. None of the characters in the play are considered to be normal. Their seeking for perfection leads to a crime. A crime that was hidden for many years and Grandma eventually discloses it to an outsider. Mommy represents the typical selfish individual who is concerned more about her needs. Daddy is only a mere puppet in the hands of Mommy. His repeated dialogues convey the audience about his abnormality. As Mommy and Daddy are unable to conceive, they plan to adopt a child. The child is unable to meet up to their expectations so they castrate it and eventually kill it, hence committing an infanticide. Ironically the child is compared to a consumer product that is discarded when it leaves the consumer unsatisfied. Albee has attacked the American society and its values. At the end of the play a young man comes into the family to replace the previous child. This young man seems to be a personification...

Childism in The Catcher in the Rye, 2019

‘Unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents continue to reverberate in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings.’ Friedrich Nietzsche discerned in the 19th century that children suffered, had suffered and will suffer under the transferred inner conflicts of their parents. In a minor way, his statement prefigures Elizabeth Young-Bruehl’s realization of childism. Young-Bruehl expanded on a term which discloses prejudice against children; and ‘a prejudice is a developmental problem played out projectively in the world, among people.’ Compendiously, adults project their problems on to children. Childism, prejudice against children, permeates societies, families and individuals and shapes the ideological filter through which one approaches children. This ideological filter changes across societies, families and individuals, which implies a malleability of the concept of the child and by association, the adult. For instance, the narrator of J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye provides a singularly idealized depiction of children. This essay posits the adolescent Holden Caulfield as both the victim and perpetrator of childism, torn between an existence as an oppressed child and an oppressing adult. It will discuss whether Holden, in his spiritual endeavor to protect children from harm, breaks or perpetuates the cycle of childism. It asserts that Holden’s adventure is imbued with childism but suggests that the protagonist might break free of his prejudice. Finally, a new perspective on how to complicate the figure of the child will be offered. Children are identified with the potential to fulfill the role of God. This is exemplified by Holden’s judgement of his brother Allie.

(Published in the Popular Encyclopedia of Christian Counseling.) Of the possible losses one might experience, the death of a child is among the most intense. For a parent to bury a child screams against the order of the universe, beginning a journey of bereavement that may linger in varying degrees and manifestations throughout a parent’s lifetime. Specific circumstances prior to and surrounding the death of a child—such as the manner of death (e.g., sudden accident, suicide, or prolonged illness) or preexisting family stress—may complicate the grieving process for both relatives and friends.

Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 2017

Cast No Shadow (2015) tells the story of 13-year-old Jude Traynor, a kid deemed by his rural community to be a "delinquent" who ruins lives and never sticks to his word. The film opens on a roaring Newfoundland shoreline, a telling image of the crashing plot yet to unfold. Jude and one of his peers stand atop the edge of a rocky wall that is the final destination for the waves washing relentlessly below. Compelled by a dark opening within one of the wall's crevices, their gaze is fixed on a cave. Jude explains to his companion, Ricky, "It's a troll's lair. I got books. This stuff goes way back." Jude offers gold as the only consolation: "They feed on what you are most scared of … [but] you can pay 'em off with gold. It's their only real weakness." Nonplussed, Ricky responds, "What if you aren't afraid of em?" The boys scamper down the cliff and onto a harrowing footpath in their bid to get a closer look at the cave that Jude does and does not want to see. Jude suggests they camp there, but Ricky teases Jude that he is too afraid, and too much a "weirdo," to embark on such an adventure. Meters above the ocean, on a narrow ledge, the boys argue and Jude pushes Ricky, who tumbles like a wave onto the rocks below. Jude hears a throaty gurgling sound from within the cave. As Ricky is raked against the jagged shore, Jude battles a conflict between his fear of the troll and the cries of his injured friend. Visibly torn, Jude finally pulls Ricky to safety. Ricky has broken his ankle and now Jude drags his friend up the cliff until Ricky can go no further. Jude keeps shouting over the wind that he saved him, but Ricky only responds that he is going to die. Jude punches him, telling him to shut up and that he is not going die. The scuffle is stopped when Ricky's grandfather arrives in a pickup truck and rushes toward the boys. Seeing his grandson's broken ankle, the grandfather bellows, "Is there something wrong with you?" Jude protests one last time, "I saved him!" Ricky's grandfather is not convinced: "You little savage … I saw you hittin' 'em! You're a liar … every word that comes out of your mouth!" Ricky's grandfather storms away with the limp child in his arms, leaving Jude alone with his unbelievable side of the story. These opening scenes set the stage for a series of events that continually find Jude on the wrong side. Repeatedly, Jude is called out as a perpetrator and a liar, a story that he believes to be true

2015

Abandonment, a common fear of children, has roots in literature due to a lengthy history of child abandonment in situations where parents feel the child would be better served away from its home. In our own culture, we see the literary roots of this motif as early as in Biblical writings, such as the story of Moses, continuing into the literature of today. In many instances children are abandoned not because they are unwanted, but out of parental hope that a life away from the natural parents will provide a "better" life for the child(ren). Societies have dealt with this concern in a multitude of ways over time, spanning from Church approval for poor parents to "donate" their child(ren) to the Church up to our modern system of criminalizing such actions (Burnstein 213-221, "Child Abandonment Law & Legal Definition"). During Puritan days, children were fostered out to other homes when a woman remarried after the death of her husband, and were often removed from the home if the parents failed to ensure access to education for the children (Mintz and Kellogg 4-17). Likewise, Scandinavian youths were frequently fostered to other families, either due to a lack of living children within a family, or to cement social bonds between people of varying social status (Short). In the British Isles, surrogate parentage was routine, involving child hostages, fostering to other families to cement social bonds, to deal with illegitimate births, or to encourage increased opportunities for children born to poor families (Slitt, Rossini, Nicholls and Mackey). Correspondingly, as surrogate parentage is a common feature of life in a given society, the topic is treated routinely in literature, most notably in works of children's fiction as a mode of addressing the fears of children regarding varying modes of abandonment. Abandonment is a frequently used trope in children's literature, taking many forms including death of natural parents, running away, sublimation of the natural parent's authority to a step-parent, literal abandonment, sale or barter of child and negligent parenting 1. One sees overt demonstrations of the dangers of being parentless to children in both classics of children's literature and in modern works. However, in many cases in which the child has been abandoned, authors present at least one surrogate parental figure to guide the child toward good decision making, safety, and in some instances, reunion with the child(ren)'s natural parent(s). Three interpretations of this popular theme will here be examined in Rumpelstiltskin, by the Brothers Grimm; The Spiderwick Chronicles, by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black; and The Ugly Duckling, by H.C. Andersen. H.C. Andersen's The Ugly Duckling presents another form of abandonment, utilizing a signet in place of a human child. In Andersen's work, the signet is routinely made fun of for his ugly appearance and his inability to fit in with the ducklings. Although he has, for reasons unknown to the reader, been abandoned by his natural parents (while still in the egg, he was put into the mother duck's egg nest), the mother of the ducklings takes him on and raises him. He is abandoned, and yet not. Despite the meanness of the ducklings and the neighborhood ducks, the signet is initially defended by his "mother" and given guidance. As the signet grows into a cygnet, even his mother is embarrassed by his ugliness and she too turns on him, resulting in the cygnet running away from home. He is tolerated by wild 1Negligent parenting may take several forms or involve varying degrees of negligence, from serious negligence where children are not fed, clothed, et cetera, to occasional or the situational parental absenteeism due to the multi-tiered demands of single parenting that produces "latch key kids".

2006

Title of Document: ENDING AND “COPPING OUT”: COMPLETENESS AND CLOSURE IN THE PLAYS OF SAM SHEPARD Joseph Dennis Couch, Ph.D., 2006 Directed By: Professor Brian Richardson and Professor Peter Mallios, Department of English This dissertation analyzes the interpretive dilemmas arising from treatments of completeness and closure in Sam Shepard’s plays, an undertaking that raises two key questions about its own academic exigence. Shepard’s plays expand the discourse on closure by providing dramatic texts to which the terms “the open work,” “the sense of ending,” “anti-closure,” and the reading of texts in socio-political contexts can apply. More significantly, Shepard’s theory of closure as a “cop-out” to resolution complicates the previous discourse on closure with texts that complementarily deny formal and thematic closure in ways that previous critics do not explore. The “unloosened ends,” specifically, that each ending does not resolve not only draw attention to the unresolved status...