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Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam

Shepard’s Buried Child

Article · May 2019

DOI: 10.17754/MESK.63.2.217

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󰡔현대영어영문학󰡕 제63권 2호 Modern Studies in English Language & Literature
(2019년 5월) 217-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.17754/MESK.63.2.217

Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam

Shepard’s Buried Child

Simon, Michael P.
(Korea University)

Simon, Michael P. “Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child.”
Modern Studies in English Language & Literature 63.2 (2019): 217-35. The present paper
attempts to analyze the transformative and mythical aspects of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child.
In order to lay the framework for analysis, the writer draws on C.G. Jung, seminal figure in
the history of psychoanalysis and exploration into mythological processes. Drawing on Jungian
theories of the unconscious and archetypes, this study shows the underlying allegorical
qualities that inhabit each character and influences their turbulent interactions with each other.
As well as character examination, additional elements that impact the transformation are
investigated with the aid of Jung’s research into universal mythos. Central to the analysis is
the emphasis of Shelly as the main arbiter of change through her speech, while Vince
undergoes the prophesied transformation into the patriarch of the dysfunctional family. As a
result, the cycle of rebirth is completed, and an arguable semi-stasis is reestablished at the
conclusion of the play. (Korea University)

Key Words: Sam Shepard, Buried Child, C.G. Jung, archetypes, transformation

I. Introduction

Wandering in a landscape of personal loss, uncountable defeats, and

unknown origins constitute the prime character traits in the works of
American playwright Sam Shepard. This ostensibly nihilistic notion of
human nature is succinctly expressed in an idea of America that has “lost
touch with its own visions, in which myths have become fantasies, family
units have collapsed, language is broken, metaphors pulled apart, natural
218 Simon, Michael P.

rhythms dislocated” (Bigsby 9). However, these qualities were not always
prevalent in Shepard’s early off-off Broadway plays. An attenuation to
deeper development of character and plot did not manifest itself until after
his return from a short stay in England in the early 1970s. “It was while
in England, however, that he met the director Peter Brook, who suggested
that his work would benefit from a greater concern for character. It was
an observation that was to shift the center of gravity of his work” (Bigsby
18). This move toward progressing the narrative, as opposed to creating
‘beat’ pieces that were influenced by what Steven Bottoms has referred to
as “the writing of Ginsberg and Kerouac, the action painting of Pollock,
and the improvisational jazz of Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, and
Charles Mingus II” (41). The shift in how he approached a play colored
his perception of human nature as he grew to pay more attention to how
characters interacted with each other in his process of writing. Many
commentators have associated Shepard’s attitude toward character and plot
to the personal situations he found himself in during the writing of these
plays. He describes the contextualization one would need in reading his
older plays that “they were very much of the time, they were very much
written out of that chaotic atmosphere that was happening” (Roudané,
“Shepard on Shepard” 65). As he grew as a playwright, the plays themselves
grew more complex and certain themes began to emerge as essential in
the world Shepard wanted to show in subsequent plays. Christopher Bigsby
has commented that each setting in a Shepard play could be
interchangeable with his other plays because the real space they occupy is
psychologically (28). This idea will be further investigated in the
subsequent portions of the present paper.
With a focus on Buried Child, the winner of the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for
Drama, the author aims to study the play from this psychological space
using techniques and paradigms of Jungian psychology and the archetypal
 Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child 219

theories put forward by C. G. Jung. The nightmarish world in which a

family is very much torn apart, yet unwilling or unable to reconcile in
any way, begs for deeper analysis of the “things that have happened
before and the traces they have left on the characters’ psyches”
(Moghadam 10). The main source of familial conflict in the play requires
the reader to abandon notions of general cause and effect, or linear
motives from A to B, for something more abstract. “In Sam Shepard’s
entropic world, the primal family unit – whose members seem to be on
some grand cosmic disconnect – is trapped within its own lies of the
mind” (Roudané, “Introduction” 2). Put another way by Lynda Hart, as
Shepard transformed into a more naturalistic playwright, he focused more
intently on the exploration of the self as compared to the other characters
occupying the play, which in turn developed into an exploration of ego
(79). These insights lift the play beyond mere storytelling and into a
psychological realm that is ripe for examination.
In terms of script analysis, James Thomas notes that “plays are written
to create the impression that things are moving, that they are getting
somewhere. By this we do not always mean a chronological movement but
sometimes a psychological one” (129). As Shepard has stated in reference
to his method of writing, he puts characters in a room and lets the play
pour out of him as he records what occurs (Shepard & Dark). With this
in mind, the play yields to a Jungian approach of psychology related to
artistic unconscious and the transformation of the characters within the
structures set forward by Jung. As Jung said, “It is obvious enough that
psychology, being a study of psychic processes, can be brought to bear on
the study of literature, for the human psyche is the womb of all the arts
and sciences” (The Spirit in Man 86).
Much has been written on the concept of the play being inimitably
Oedipal in the characterization, actions and relationships between
220 Simon, Michael P.

characters; most notably between Tilden, Halie, and Dodge. Scholars like
Thomas Nash have also made links to James Frazer’s The Golden Bough
and the motifs of the Corn King, particularly for example of the scene
where Dodge is being covered in corn husks in Act I (486). However, as
legitimate as they are in their analysis, a further inquiry in to the myth
and mythos involving all of the characters and situations in the play need
to be addressed, due to the inherent difficulty of a superficial approach to
the play. There are more variables at play that even Shepard himself might
not be fully aware. As Peter Hays notes, Shepard is either holding
something back or keeping something hidden from the audience. Due to
this, a plethora of analyses are bound to be developed without any one
being the canonical (441). An example is the concept of Shelly being the
arbiter of change within the play as she represents the audiences’ inquiry
into the bizarre happenings around her, rather than the commonly held
concept of Vince being the mediator of events. As Emma Creedon
concisely points out, Shelly is the one who discovers the veiled scheme
(70). Thus, a Jungian approach to Buried Child is necessary in the lexicon
of works examining the plays of Sam Shepard.

II. Basic Tenets of Jungian Theories

To begin an overview of Jungian psychoanalytic theories, a fundamental

aspect of Jung’s work needs to be addressed. The ideas of the collective
unconscious and archetypes were born from his arduous and complicated
research after his rift and eventual disconnect with former mentor Sigmund
Freud. “Primitive man is not much interested in objective explanations of
the obvious, but he has an imperative need – or rather, his unconscious
psyche has an irresistible urge – to assimilate all outer sense experiences
 Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child 221

to inner, psychic events” (Jung, Archetypes 6). This was Jung’s

fundamental turn in his approach to the mind after academic exile from
Freud. Humans wanted to explain the systems and patterns they
experienced around them, and without knowledge of scientific inquiry
myths were born.
Jung relates the unconscious to the inner world of man and the
experiences that happen with him (Aion 3). The unconscious for Jung
meant the part of the psyche which was unknowable and locked away
from our conscious purview. The only way to see what the unconscious is
doing is through projections of what the unconscious wishes to reveal,
namely in the form of archetypes. These archetypes have existed since
ancient times and are hypothetical and are unable to be represented
physically (Jung, Archetypes 5). The essence of what an archetype
represents is expressed through myths and fairy tales, which Jung goes on
to catalogue from various cultures in his extensive volumes on the topic.
Discussed in a slightly different way, Erich Neumann describes the
archetypes as psychic images which are perceived by the conscious mind
which represent the spirit of the archetype. Different aspects of an
archetype can also be revealed in different images as well (4). The image
perceived to be the archetype is universal and “determines human behavior
unconsciously but in accordance with laws and independently of the
experience of the individual” (Neumann 4). In short, the image which
represents a universal quality becomes what is deemed the archetype and
all images that follow those qualities are categorized within that system. A
basic example to illuminate this notion are heroes in fiction. Each hero,
from Greek plays to modern fiction, exhibit similar characteristics which
label them as ‘hero’. These basic traits, from the Jungian perspective, are
born from our unconscious as to what qualities a good and noble human
should achieve.
222 Simon, Michael P.

Jung was particularly impressed with primitive man’s ability to grasp

these archetypes and turn them into the myths we know today. Literature,
including the medium of drama, had the potential to represent the
archetypes in a psychologically digestible way. As Jung relayed when
talking about the arts, “it is therefore to be expected that the poet will
turn to mythological figures in order to give suitable expression to his
experience” (The Spirit in Man 96). This concept can still be considered
valid given the countless re-staging of classic works which portray these
mythic characters in either their original setting or in new and interesting
circumstances.
In discussing archetypes, three seem to be the most prevalent in the
arts. The three main archetypal representations of the world are the
Great/Terrible Mother, the Great/Terrible Father, and the Hero. Jordan
Peterson gives a terse definition to the three: the eternal unknown
(Mother), which can be described as nature, is simultaneously creative and
destructive. The eternal known (Father), which is described as culture, is
both tyrannical and protective. The eternal knower (Hero), intercedes
between the known and the unknown, commonly “the knight who slays
the dragon of chaos, the hero who replaces disorder and confusion with
clarity and certainty” (20). The duality between the mother and father
figures being of a great and terrible nature is purely metaphorical in that
they are described as such to give the conscious self a concept to
cognitively grasp. The “terrible” describes negative elements which can
also arise independently from the union of the Great Mother and vice
versa (Neumann 21).
On one end of the spectrum, the Great Mother is a nurturing and
caring entity; on the other, a devouring and hateful being. She is
characteristic of being part of nature and earth, as opposed to the light
and spirit of the Great Father. He also exhibits one side of knowledge and
 Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child 223

masculinity, while the other is oppressive and destructive. A more pertinent

example of this concept of the Mother archetype is from the story of
Cinderella. The Terrible Mother is represented by the aptly named
Step-Mother who attempts to thwart Cinderella’s plans of attending the
ball. She does everything she can to lock Cinderella away only because
she is scared of her beauty and goodness. To counter this wickedness is
the also aptly named Fairy Godmother, who uses her power of goodness
to help Cinderella in transforming her and the things around her into tools
to achieve her goal. This dichotomy of two opposing motherly forces is
the basis for many fairy tales and stories that have been told for
generations.

III. Buried in the Psyche

Having thus laid the foundation of Jungian theory, we can now apply
these fundamental conceptions to a reading of Buried Child. In the first
milieu of the play, we are confronted with a space in which the stairs
have no landing, leading into an unknown space. The furniture on the
stage is old and worn and beyond the porch outside “are the shapes of
dark elm trees” (Shepard 7). We can assume the unknown beyond what
we immediately see on stage is the mysterious part of the psyche, or in
Jungian language, the unconscious. “The porch, for instance, becomes a
passageway linking the ghostly happenings of the household, which has
escaped the passage of time for thirty years, with a frightening and
unpredictable world outside” (DeRose 142). As mentioned previously, this
dark space is the unconscious where the archetypal spirits linger, and
where the transformations will take place in the play.
Each character is unique in not only their action toward the other
224 Simon, Michael P.

characters, but in the features which make them inimitable. Dodge, the
patriarch of the family, is customarily characterized in mythic terms as the
dying king. “Dodge awaits death in a costume of khaki clothes, his body
draped in colors that symbolically represent the withering of his body and
soul” (Nash 488). He is our Great/Terrible Father to Halie’s Great/Terrible
Mother, who remains unseen in the first part of the play. As events in the
play unfold, it becomes apparent that Dodge and Halie are not able to
communicate effectively in what should be expected for a couple who
have been married as long as they have. In the course of two pages of
dialogue, Halie says, “What?” a total of six times, compelling Dodge to
either repeat what he was saying or dismiss his thoughts altogether
(Shepard 8-9). A disconnect of speech and history keep the two characters
at opposing ends of the psychological spectrum while also creating an
eruption of misinformation and anger whenever they do come close to
interacting on any realistic level. As Charles Whiting points out in his
reading, “Buried Child is about a family whose members are ‘dead’ for
each other” (549). Evasion and tension are the only two outcomes that
come from their exchanges:

HALIE’S VOICE. Dodge, are you watching baseball?

DODGE. No.
HALIE’S VOICE. What’re you watching? You shouldn’t be watching
anything that’ll get you excited! No horse racing.
DODGE. They don’t race on Sundays. (Shepard 8-9)

Dodge is neither watching baseball nor horse racing, but as Benjamin

Opipari notes, while Dodge is being evasive, he is unwilling to tell her
what he is not doing as well (129). The disconnect between the
representative feminine of nature (Halie) and the masculine of culture
(Dodge) has created a disjointed state of affairs unfamiliar to anyone who
 Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child 225

lives in the real world where the balance between the two is corrected
and maintained on a regular basis. The audience waits for the Hero to
arrive and correct the damage which has been done, but they will not get
the catharsis they expect as in any other realistically staged play.
The extent to which two characters represent contrasting or conflicting
systems of thought does not end with Halie and Dodge. Tilden and
Bradley are characteristic of opposing brothers in the tradition of Cain and
Abel or Christ and the Anti-Christ. Tilden’s main character trait is of a
“slow-witted man in his forties with the emotional age of a young
adolescent” (Opipari 124). Shepard’s stage directions describe Tilden’s state
as “profoundly burned out and displaced” (13). Tilden has been the focus
of a number of analyses and critiques given the importance of his actions
at the end of the play. Nima Behroozi Monghadam has even categorized
him as the most isolated character in the play as well as a fragmented
human being (12). Tilden does not exhibit any characteristics that would
label him a hero or any other mythic centerpiece of the drama. His
inability to grasp the gravity of the situation makes him weak and unable
to deal with difficult situations. This could be the reason Tilden was
kicked out of New Mexico for mysterious circumstances which are never
clarified. With all of this, Tilden’s actions in the play are kindly and
unthreatening enough for Shelly to trust him. When she is left alone with
Dodge and Tilden, Dodge scolds Tilden to leave her alone after he has
been circling her. She responds, “He’s all right” as she continues to prod
into the mysterious circumstances that have left the house in the confusing
and unrecognizable state (Shepard 44).
It is very common for critics and analysts of the play to classify Tilden
and Halie as two characters playing out the Oedipal myth within the
structure of the dying American dream embodied by their family. Beyond
the obvious allusions made by Dodge to the possible incestual relationship
226 Simon, Michael P.

between Tilden and Halie, there are no other indicators that Tilden is an
allegorical embodiment of Oedipus as he does not fulfill the requirements
needed to make the potential archetype work. Jung tries to address this in
his analysis of the incest motif where he believes it is not possible for
adults to re-establish an infantile relationship with a parent. The reason for
this is the libido is already mature and is unable to regress back into the
form it once was (Symbols 204-205). Jung believed Freud put too much
emphasis on sexual repression being a direct channel to incest. Put simply
in terms of the play, the events do not follow the logic needed to label
Tilden and Halie’s relationship an incest narrative.
Bradley, on the other hand, expresses the reverse characteristics of what
Tilden personifies. Bradley can be described as a bully that Dodge refers
to as “belong[ing] in a hog wallow” (Hooti & Shooshtarian 81). Bradley
displays unrelenting violence that makes him an enemy of the family to
such a degree that Dodge exclaims, “You tell Bradley that if he shows up
here with those clippers, I’ll separate him from his manhood!” (Shepard
11). At the end of Act I, Bradley indeed uses the clippers to brutally
shave Dodge’s head while he sleeps in a moment many commenters on
the play have branded a form of castration. There is some truth to this
view yet looking at it from a Jungian perspective there seems to be more
happening in this pivotal moment at the end of the first act. In his
research on images of the sun in art and myth, Jung noted in many
cultures the rays of the sun, the light in which extends outward from a
single source, is connected to hair and the knowledge which comes forth
from the head. “The sun in its course must represent the fate of a god or
hero who, in the last analysis, dwells nowhere except in the soul of man”
(Jung, Archetypes 6). The darkness that prevails over most of the play
then signifies the end of this life cycle, which then rises again in an
altered way at the end of the play. Thus, Bradley cutting Dodge’s hair in
 Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child 227

this way is an inherent signal of this motif in action, cutting the light and
knowledge from Dodge, leaving him powerless to oppose his other half
(Halie) for the rest of the play. “Ancillary rituals of pruning occur:
Bradley shears Dodge, prunes his own leg, both images of emasculation”
(Hays 443). The mystery of what happened during Bradley’s accident in
which his leg was sawed off is never mentioned, and never needs to be
because the why is not as important as what happens after the act is
completed. Thus, the purpose of Bradley’s ferocious act is clearer when
observed from the perspective of how the sudo-emasculation affects the
circumstances of the play from that point forward.
Vince, the prodigal son looking for his roots, is seen as a stranger in
the house he swears he has been to not six years before. He should be
the character in which the audience grapples onto for some semblance of
meaning and answers. He has expectations of what will transpire and
believes his memories will allow him to understand the confusing situation
he eventually finds himself in. His past experiences color his view of the
other characters as he attempts to find meaning from the items and icons
he attempts to recall (Putzel & Westfall 112). In the general realistic
representation that would give the audience a character to root for and
follow on the hero’s journey, Vince fails as he is absent for the majority
of the play, leaving Shelly to fend for herself among strangers in a
strange land.
Shelly’s subsequent investigation into the unusual situation she finds
herself in reflects what the audience has been attempting to understand
since the first act of the play. Through her actions in the play, she is the
only one who could be considered a Jungian Hero. Hart finds Shelly to
be an objective presence, an outsider with no tie to the family whatsoever
and whose point of view the audience can filter with their own
perspective of the family (77-78). Creedon also credits Shelly as the vessel
228 Simon, Michael P.

in which the audience uses to see the play in a sensible way. “[Shelly is]
the personification of rationalism and the representative of the audience’s
peripheral uninformed viewpoint” (68). She tries to unravel the secret
plaguing the family and runs into a number of obstacles in her inquiry
(Hooti & Shooshtarian 80). Shelly is the one to try and confront the
mystery while the others attempt to keep it buried.

DODGE. She wants to get to the bottom of it. That’s it, isn’t it? You’d
like to get down to bedrock. Look the beast right dead in the eye. You
want me to tell ya? You want me to tell ya what happened? I’ll tell ya. I
might as well. I would mind hearing it hit the air after all these years of
silence. (Shepard 65)

As Ann Wilson explains, the story is told because Shelly demands to

know it. She wants to hear a story that matches the pictures she finds on
the balcony and in the bedroom to verify the family is real in who they
are, but not necessarily meaning the story itself is true (111). One of the
main impediments to her search for the truth is Bradley. At one very
tense moment of the play, Bradley sticks his fingers in Shelly’s mouth.
Hooti Noorbakhsh & Samaneh Shooshtarian do not seem to see a purpose
to this action (80). Others have pointed to the fact this seems to be a
veiled assault on Shelly. However, if it were an assault, it could have
been carried out in any other way. The choice of the mouth is not
accidental if examined from a Jungian perspective. As mentioned before,
part of the purpose of the Great/Terrible Mother is to devour and to
create, both symbolically through oral means. In Bradley’s confusion of
who Shelly is and why she is in the family’s house, it is highly possible
his intention was to prevent this female stranger to use her mouth to bring
any form of change that the Great/Terrible Mother archetype signifies.
After displacing his father and awaiting rebirth from his mother, Bradley
 Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child 229

attempts to stop Shelly from calling forth the truth from the metaphysical
underworld where the conscious keeps the answers. In addition, throughout
the work of Jung there is a prevailing notion of the mouth as a channel
in which spoken truth manifests a renewal or rebirth. He relates a story in
which the discovery of fire, one of the most influential happenings in
human history, came from the mouth (Symbols 161).
This idea of the mouth as a powerful tool has also been documented
from numerous cultures and customs, and can be most significantly seen in
the Bible, where it is said, “And the Word was made flesh” (King James
Version, John 1:14). It is personified with the image of the Uroboros, the
snake that eats its own tail and the representation of the cyclical nature of
life. Shelly gets her revenge later in the play when she keeps Bradley’s
wooden leg from his reach, leaving him completely helpless. “Shelly
strikes back by equally figuratively castrating Bradley by hiding his
wooden leg. She appears capable of symbolic castration and is a threat”
(Creedon 68). Through her ordeal, she eventually gets to the bottom of the
mystery and is the only one that can escape the aftermath that ensues.

IV. Conduits of Transformation

The surrounding natural elements also play an important and often

overlooked role in the play. The rain that bears down upon the house in
the first two acts is verbalized by Halie as “coming down in sheets. Blue
sheets. The bridge is pretty near flooded. What’s it like down there?”
(Shepard 8). She blames the rain for giving Dodge a coughing fit and as
Nash points out, the rain “washes the marrow from the bones of the
buried child, fertilizing the long-neglected cornfields, preparing the land for
a miraculous rebirth” (487). The mythical feature of water is well-documented
230 Simon, Michael P.

by Jung and can be summarized as a maternal device (Symbols 219). The

rain that drapes the house in darkness is the symbol of the unconscious
and the power associated with the Great/Terrible Mother. As mentioned
before, it is only until a rebirth of the Great/Terrible Father at the end of
the play that the sun rises and pushes the rain away.
Another symbolic element often overlooked is the consistent use of
bottles throughout the play. Hidden under the couch cushion is a bottle of
alcohol which Dodge drinks from at the beginning of the play while
conversing with his unseen wife. This attempt to hide his liquid courage
from the more powerful Halie gives us an indication of the desperation
Dodge feels to counterbalance the current situation. It is willing to note
that the particular kind of alcohol is mentioned by name only once,
leaving us to cognitively grasp another lexical substitute when constantly
called “bottle” by the characters in the play. Naturally, a baby’s milk
bottle would be an appropriate substitute in this situation as Dodge is left
helpless and vulnerable after it is taken away, not unlike a baby. After
Tilden takes the bottle from Dodge, he becomes crazed.

DODGE. Where’s my bottle?

TILDEN. Gone.
DODGE. You stole my bottle!
…
DODGE. You had no right to steal my bottle. No right at all! Who do you
think you are? (Shepard 35-36)

The bottle is used as a visual signifier of power as it allowed Dodge to

speak to his more intimidating wife and gives him comfort in his present
state of disarray. He attempts to convince Tilden to get him another bottle
from the store and mentions money on the kitchen counter for him to use.
The natural ascension of power in this situation would fall on Tilden, yet
 Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child 231

his nature, as described earlier, inhibits him from completing the task. The
next best thing for Dodge to do is entrust his unrecognized grandson to
take the responsibility of getting his bottle.

DODGE. Where are you going?

VINCE. I’m going to get the money.
DODGE. Then where are you goin’?
VINCE. Liquor store.
DODGE. Don’t go off anyplace else. Don’t go off some place and drink by
yourself. Come right back here.
VINCE. I will.
DODGE. You’ve got responsibility now! And don’t go out the back way
either! Come out through this way! I wanna see you when you leave! Don’t
go out the back.
VINCE. I won’t! (Shepard 42-43)

If one were to look at this symbolically, Vince is thus thrust on a quest

to find the allegorical scepter of the king and restore balance to the
kingdom. This is very obviously the role a hero plays in many mythic
stories and is not lost upon here. Once he gets these bottles, he discovers
something about himself he never realized, or was conscious of before.
What was formerly seen as a hero’s journey has altered into something
unexpected. He drunkenly smashes the bottles on the porch in anger,
knowing full well that he is not the hero of the story. He must now
assume the soon-to-be vacant role of the Great/Terrible Father that Dodge
bequeaths to Vince.

VINCE. I could see myself in the windshield. My face. My eyes. I studied

my face. Studied everything about it as though I was looking at another
man. As though I could see his whole race behind him…and then his face
changed. His face became his father’s face. Same bones. Same eyes. Same
nose. Same breath. (Shepard 71)
232 Simon, Michael P.

As Orbison notes, “Vince’s dream-vision signifies a journey into his

unconscious” (516). In the end, nothing changes except the dethronement
of Dodge in his rebirth as Vince when Vince cuts his way through the
screen door like a newborn birthed into the world. Nash describes it as
Vince being recognized by all for who he really is, while at the same
time Tilden pulls the corpse of the buried child from the soaked earth
(489). Dodge then wills the property and house to Vince, a ceremonial
passing of the torch to Vince to become the new counterbalance to Halie,
the Great/Terrible Mother. This new condition leaves Halie in amazement
as she looks on to the newly growing crops as the play closes.

HALIE. I’ve never seen a crop like this in my whole life. Maybe it’s the
sun. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the sun. (Shepard 73)

As mentioned previously, the sun is typically associated with the

Great/Terrible Father, and now that Vince has assumed the role, the sun is
therefore able to bring forth light upon the new state of affairs; those
being the same as at the beginning of the play, yet with slightly different
characters. Thomas Adler also notices the circular nature of the play and
how the beginning mirrors the ending, while also displaying the
transformation Vince has gone through to become the new father-figure
(115). The rebirth of Vince is not literal, but metaphorical in that Vince
becomes reborn in the image of his family through the situations of the
play. Thanks to the heroic efforts of Shelly to discover the secret and
bring it to light, Vince is able to take the mantle and now rule over his
new kingdom.
 Symbols on the Stage: Transformation in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child 233

V. Conclusion

This study of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child explored the transformative

aspects of the play through the lens of Jungian theories of mythology and
symbols. It showed how Jung’s ideas of the unconscious are clearly
represented in the play as archetypes and how the characters met the
conditions which give them their archetypal forms. Halie is the archetypal
Great/Terrible Mother whose power has overbalanced the stasis of the
family for numerous years, showing a need for a counterbalance. As Vince
becomes the new patriarch of the family, Shelly is the hero through which
her speech brings forth the elements which help to metaphorically and
literally unearth the terrible secret plaguing the family. “The crop planted
by Dodge has suddenly burst from the ground, transforming the garden
into a new Eden” (Hart 87). By investigating the circumstances of how
the family came to be where they are when the curtain rises, Shelly is the
accidental knight who slays the dragon plaguing the family. The cycle of
rebirth is completed, and a new day rises with the growth of the newly
abundant crops in the backyard. Whether the scene will continue in this
way after the play closes is debatable, but what is clear is the
transformation has yielded seemingly positive results.
Whether Sam Shepard was aware of these archetypal patterns is
unknown, but with the insight gained from the brief history of his
authorship and the time in which the play was written, it can be strongly
implied the ideas of Jung were permeating through Shepard and society. A
deeper Jungian analysis of not only Shepard’s other plays but plays in the
same thematical vein can draw new insights into dramatic analysis and
lead to fresh perspectives of performance.
234 Simon, Michael P.

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Simon, Michael P. / Graduate Student

Address: 104A, Anam-ro 145, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea
Korea University, College of Education
Email: mpsimon87@korea.ac.kr

Received: 2019. 04. 10 / Reviewed: 2019. 05. 08 / Accepted: 2019. 05. 30

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