Buried Child - Sam Shepard themes?!?

Question

Really tough to find info on this play and cause it's post-modern, i was just wondering which themes you identify in it? (if you've read it)

Answer 1

the themes and characters of buried child are pretty elusive because, to a large extent i think, Shepard is encouraging the reader to create their own meaning but i do think there are certain things that he purposefully included such as:

THE AMERICAN DREAM - this is in the subtext of a lot of Shepard's plays and most specifically this one.  he presents the reader with an archetypal family and then shows how the family disintegrates.  Halie is guilty of incest, Dodge killed a child, bradley is a violent bully and tilden is mentally unstable. the utter failure of all the sons is remniscient of the failure of the american dream.

an obvious one is FAMILY - especially with Vince who believes he's returning to the place he once called home and his family doesn't even remember him. When he speaks about how he was driving and looked in the mirror and saw his face changed into the faces of past generations, it shows how everything has to do with family. Shelley is also worth mentioning in her creation of Vince's ideal family that she came to know in her imagination and the let down of reality.

there are a lot of other ones - like decay and decomposition (thats an important one)... unearthing of things (the vegetables, the child, the truth)

um thats all i can think of...