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Ain Shams University

Faculty of Arts
Department of English Language and Literature

The American Nightmare in Selected Plays by SamShepard:

A Psychoanalytic and Semiotic Study
An M.A. Thesis
Submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature
Of Ain Shams University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts
(English Literature)

Submitted By
Ahmed Mohammed Ali El-Hoseiny

Under the Supervision of

Prof. Nadia Soliman Hafez Mansour Prof. Etaf Ali A. Elbanna

Professor of English Literature Professor of English Literature
Faculty of Arts Ain Shams Univ. Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams Univ.

2015
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Table of Contents

Preface ………………………………………………………………………………………I
Chapter One
SamShepard: Cultural and Biographical Contexts …………………………………………………1
Chapter Two
The Collapse of the Contemporary Familyand Society …………………………………...............47
Chapter Three
Psychopathological Archetypesand GothicisminShepard's Curseand Buried Child………………….95
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………...148
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………..153
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NOTES ON PRESENTATION

The researcher's system of documenting sources (in-text citations and Bibliography)

conforms to the requirements laid down in MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers
(7th ed., 2009).
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With all signs of love, this thesis is dedicated to my

father's soul, my mother, my wife and, especially my
daughter Malak
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First and foremost, thanks to Allah, The Most Merciful.

I would like to express my endless appreciation to Prof. Nadia S. H. Mansour, and Prof. Etaf Ali
Elbanna, Professors of English Literature, Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University, for their continuous
instructions, valuable criticism and sincere advice. It is a great honor to work under their supervision.
Without their guidance and academic support, this thesis would not have seen light. Through their
recommendations and revisions did I learn more.

I cannot forget the favor and the teachings of my professors who taught me during the graduate stage
(Faculty of Education and Faculty of Arts at Menoufia University). Special thanks are due to Prof. Usama
Abdel-Fattah Madany Abd-elbar, Prof. Hosni El-Daly, Prof. Ahmad El-Sayyad, Prof. Elsayed
Usman and Prof. Abd-elmoneim Ali Habib.

My deepest regards to all the professors of English language who taught me during the M. A.
Preliminary Year at Ain Shams Univ., especially Prof. Jeanette Wahba Sourial Atiya, Prof. Waffia
Mohammed Mursy, Prof. Samira Basta and the late Prof. Radwa Ashour (May Allah Have Mercy on
Her). No words can describe my deepest gratitude to them.

Thanks are also due to Prof. Mohammed Enani and Prof. Loubna Youssef, Professors of English
Language and Literature, Cairo Univ. Although I was enrolled in the M. A. Program at Cairo Univ. in
2011 and did not enter the exams for some reasons, I attended the lectures of those professors and learnt a
lot, especially in the fields of criticism and drama. My deepest regards are also due to Prof. Ibrahim El-
Maghraby, Professor of English Language and Literature, Mansoura Univ.

No words can describe my gratitude to my family for their love and support. Thanks are also due to my
loving wife Basma and beautiful daughter Malak.
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Abstract

The present thesis explorestwo of SamShepard'sfamilytrilogy, Curseof theStarving Class and Buried Child, from
psychoanalyticandsemiotic perspectives. Intheseplays, Shepard borrows and, at thesametime, subvertsthemyths long
heldabout the American family and the AmericanDream. Heis frequentlylocated within both American drama's obsession
withtheAmerican Dreamandthe AmericanGothictraditionfor his vehement critique of the American nation andits
culture. Althoughthese plays reflect theculture of thefifties andthe sixtiesin America, theystill havetheir influence today.
Thisisduetothefact that theproblems andthe psychic agonies Shepard'sfamiliesfaceandexperience in such playsare not
different fromthosethe contemporary global family hasto endure. For such areason, his plays acquireaninternational
dimensioninthesensethat it isnot onlythe Americanfamily or societyfacesthe problems of violence, narcissism, anomie
and capitalism, but the whole contemporary worldas well. Thethesisattempt toshed light onthe psychological agoniesthe
American familysuffersfromandthedeterioratedfamilial bonds froma psychoanalytic angle, employingthetheoriesof
Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Carl Jung, as well asfroma semiotic perspective whileemployingthePeirceanmodel.

Key words: SamShepard, Freud, Jung, Lacan, Trauma, American Dream, Gothic, Familial Relations.
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Preface
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Preface

Sam Shepard, widely ranked as the leading American dramatist of his generation, is regarded as one of the most
controversial and promising contemporary American playwrights, emerging from the Off-Off-Broadway. He has been
widely hailed as one of the most important American playwrights since O'Neill, Miller, Williams and Albee. As the back
(lower) cover of Shepard's Fool for Love and Other Plays (1984) informs, Marsha Norman thinks of Shepard as "the most
exciting presence in the movie world and one of the most gifted writers ever to work on the American stage". Shepard
developed his career from an amateur and a highway boy addicted to drugs and obsessed with rock and roll music to a
distinguished dramatist. He started by joining a touring theatre company with whom he reached NewYork after deserting
his family and became drawn in the Off-Off-Broadway through Ralph Cook, the club's head waiter. "Anybody could get
hisor her places"inthe newtheatresjust whenthe Off-Off-Broadwaytheatrical movement wasstarting(Baym 2279).

Off-Off-Broadway has been mainly interested ininvestigatingtheatrically Man's identity and deteriorated psyche, "apart
from political oppression: locating an individual essence or reality outside conformist social roles" (Saddik 131); therefore
Shepard's protagonists "encounter one another in a space that is psychological rather than literal" (Bercovitch 58). Shepard
began writing plays in the tradition of Open Theatre group that has been "experimenting with 'transformation' fromone kind
of reality to another" (Poggi 198). Joseph Chaikin was "indisputably established as the aesthetic leader of the group and his
preferencefor clear and distilled artistic expression won out over amorecommunal, egalitarian orientation" (Rabb 25).

Shepard has shown multiple talents and exerted assiduous efforts. His multitalentedness is manifested in his being an
actor, composer, prose writer, director, poet, rock musician, playwright and screenwriter at the same time. Towards the end
of the 1980s, Shepard directed his attention to acting and directing. Although Shepard once admitted that he had never
dreamed of becoming a playwright, his dramatic craft was his main interest: "I don't want to be a playwright, I want to bea
rock and roll star" (qtd. in Law 461). Even though Shepard "has a great deal of cinematic experience on both sides of the
camera, hemade his professional start inthe Off-Off Broadway theaters of NewYork inthe 1960s"(Streufert 9).

Shepard is frequently located within the sphere of American drama's obsession with the notion of the American Dream
as well as within that of the American Gothic tradition due to his vehement critique of the American culture and the nation's
spreading of the fallacy of American justice, prosperity and freedom. Although Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and
Tennessee Williams produced plays that were performed on Broadway, Shepard is frequently placed within the literary
sphere along with them for his familial and psychopathological concerns as well as for his handling the issue of the
American Dream. If O’Neill isregardedas "The Father of American Drama" who dominatedthe Americanstage duringthe
twenties and the thirties of the 20th century, and if Miller ruled it during the fifties and the sixties, Shepard could be
considered the most celebrated playwright in America from the 1960s till now(Mathisen 1). All the four playwrights—
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Williams, Miller, O’Neill and Shepard—are concerned withthefamily institution andthe American Dreamconcept. Tothe
four, one can add another influential playwright who emerged before Shepard, namely, Edward Albee who is famous for
attackingthefoundation of American optimism, using alot of thethemesand theatrical devices of the Theatre of Absurd. In
the dramas of those writers, thefailure of American Dreamis constantly associated withthe demise and the disintegration of
the family institution. The family represents the basic unit of each society; if the former faces the abyss of devasting
desperation, the latter cannot endurethe predicament either. Neither the 20th centurynor thecontemporaryfamily has beena
sweet and warmplacefor itsmembers. Rather, it becomesanarea of exercising violence.

Shepard's dramatic corpus generally and persistently laments the decline of the American Dream, the decay of the once
harmoniously established American family, the traditional moral values, and the American national myths. Shepard has
portrayed the degeneration and the spiritual sterility of the American society in which its beliefs, customs, myths and
standards have beeneroded. He believes that the horrors foundin America have ledto the deteriorated state of the American
family and its demise. Apersistent concern for Shepard in almost all his works is "the disappearance of the myths on which
American character and spirit" are based (Patraka and Siegel 5). The American society, overwhelmed by its secular,
egotistic or "me-decade" culture as Christopher Lasch calls it, has become spiritually dead and so dehumanized that it has
reached the highest levels of narcissism, alienation, loss and disintegration. "Time goes, there came the time of the Me! Me!
Me! generations of status seekers" (McRobbie 157). Erich Fromm, in Psychoanalysis and Religion, remarksthat in spite of
reaching the most fascinating technological levels, Man failed in achieving his authentic identity and never reached the
fulfillment of thedreamof wholeness. While weinventedfascinating objects, our lives have become void of companionship,
charity, happiness and content (7-9). It seems that the "ongoing American obsession with technological and economic
progress has made it difficult for contemporary subjects to build and construct meaningful lives and relationships" (Crosby
iii). As an inevitable outcome, Man's psychological problems increased, along with the increasing rates of mental and
psychological disturbances, crime, violence and delinquency.

One of the major concepts that have various and vague perceptions, distinguishing American literature from the
mainstreamEuropean and Britishliterature, is thepresence of the notion of the American Dreamthat is specificallylinkedto
the American continent. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau were among
the most influential and transcendental writers who addressed the concept of the American Dream. Their writings both
celebratethe American yearnings for freedom, success, social stability, self-reliance and authenticmeaning of life, and, inthe
same vein, warn against materialistic misconceptions (Merbah 1-2). However, the origin of the American Dream is
attributedto Europe. In The Theatre of the Absurd (1969), Martin Esslin contendsthat "the American dreamof thegoodlife
is still very strong. In the United States the belief in progress that characterized Europe in the nineteenth century has been
maintained into the middle of the twentieth" (qtd. in Anderson 4). In American Dreams, American Nightmares (1970),
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David Maddennotesthat "There has never beena purely American Dream, because inthebeginning all Europe lay downin
'the American Dreambed' and dreamed universal dreams"(qtd. in Anderson 4).

"American Dream", as a term, was first coined by the historian James Truslow Adams, a White male investment
banker and Yale graduate, in an article he wrote in 1931 for the Catholic Worker as well asin his book The Epic of America
(Rather xiv). He defines it as "that dream of land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with
opportunity for each according tohis ability or achievement"(404). It is''a dreamof social order in which eachmanand each
woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what
theyare, regardlessof the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position" (Adams 404).

Modern scholars concede that traditional American Dream individualism focuses on autonomy and creativity. The
idealization of the independent, self-sufficient individual constitutes a basic aspect of the American Dream. The dignity and
importance of the individual are emphasized. The focus on the human Self is given a priority. However, there is a belief that
the American Dreamhasto dosolely withthe economic prosperity. While the AmericanDreamhad been a dogma or a state
religionsincethefoundingof theNewWorld, Lynda G. Adamson, in Thematic Guidetothe American Novel (2002), claims
that "the American Dream is social and material, not emotional or spiritual,” and quotes the Oxford English Dictionary’s
definition of the American Dream as "the ideal of a democratic and prosperous society which the traditional aim of the
American people; a catch-phrase used to symbolize American social or material valuesin general" (21).Whether the Dream
was economic, political or religious, it is true that the fact that it had come to refer merely to economic prosperity bothered
many Americanintellectuals, and sothey concentrated onit.

America was the first nation to be founded upon an ideal or an Edenic concept of being a promised land of freedom,
love and adventure. The ideal was that each individual has undeniable rights that no man or government body can strip
away. Historically, the American Dream implies an attitude of faith and hope that seeks the fulfillment of human desires
expressed in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence of 1776. In this Declaration, America's founding Fathers plainly
established the true meaning of the American Dream whose main and capsuled meaning is found in the second sentence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" (qtd. in Addison 299-300). Thus, the
faith in the Creator and Freedomare closely interwoven and inexorable. The materialistic pursuit, for the founding Fathers,
was not the ultimate goal. However, the American Dreamhas undergone ashift fromthese two nobleaims(Faithin Creator
and Freedom) to mundane and materialistic goals. In this respect, John E. Nestler, in his article "The American Dream"
(1973), points out that "Whereas the American Dream was once equated with certain principles of freedom, it is now
equated withthings. The American Dreamhas undergone ametamorphosis fromprinciplestomaterialism. . . When people
are concerned more with the attainment of things than with the maintenance of principles, it is a sign of moral decay. And it
isthroughsuchdecay that lossof freedomoccurs"(594).
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Despite increasing secularization, a degree of social integration was nevertheless maintained on the basis of common
values such as the belief in Man's ability to achieve much more technological and scientific inventions and the faith in the
Protestant ethic of virtuous acts. The horrible and the unparalleled destructiveness of WWI, WWII, and the Great
Depression of 1929 shook the pillars of the American society. Rapid social changes, especially the transformation of
America from an agricultural to an industrial and technological community caused the break-up of the social order. This
resulted in man's estrangement and the inability of the society to provide its members with a meaningful Self. The society
became heterogeneous and the center no longer was able to hold its parts. Individuals experienced sufferings and anxieties;
thesense of social dislocationdominated the American scene.

Sam Shepard produces a family trilogy that depicts the failure of the American Dream and the dissolution of the
contemporary Americanfamilyand society. Curse, Buried Child and TrueWest constitute such atrilogythat has the realistic
style. Through the family, Shepard reflects the whole society. The family is treated as a metaphor as well as a metonymy:
through the family does Shepard makes a critique of the contemporary society and the part (the family as a microcosm)
reflects the whole (the society as a macrocosm). Although Curse and Buried Child were written towards the end of the
seventies of the twentieth century in 1976 and 1978 respectively, the two plays reflect the dilemma of our contemporary
family and society.
The thesis adopts a two-fold purpose: firstly, to examine the failure of the American Dream and the subsequent
emergence of the American Nightmare in Shepard's two family plays Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child,
secondly, to examine the collapse of the contemporary family and society within psychoanalytic and semiotic perspectives
in these plays. The American Dream , in its relation to the family unit, was the main preoccupation of Shepard's dramatic
forefathers and has been the mainstream of American drama since O'Neill. The gothic elements in Shepard's plays under
investigation will beexploredthrough psychoanalytic andsemioticlens.

The researcher's selection of Shepard's Curse and Buried Child in particular, while excluding True West fromthe scope
of the present studyis dueto tworeasons. Firstly, not onlydothe plays in questionreflect the cultural aspects of the fiftiesand
the sixties of America, but they also bear and reflect international phenomena like violence, narcissism, the curse of the
capitalistic system, incest, familial problems, etc. The contemporary world has grown spiritually dead due its obsession with
the technological and the industrial developments while leaving the ideals and the simple agricultural life. People have
become selfish, seekingmoney greedily, leaving what is essential like bringing their children upin acaring way, maintaining
familial warmth(whether physically or emotionally), establishingfruitful interpersonal relationshipsat thesocial level, caring
for their lands and properties instead of selling them to mean capitalists who suck the poor's blood and strength, etc.
Secondly, both plays depict the demise of the American Dream which is simultaneously juxtaposed with the failure of the
American familythat was supposed to bethe safest haven, rather than anarena of struggle, for itsmembers. Excluding True
West fromthe scope of the present studyis due tothefact that some of the major issues tackledin the earlier plays Curseand
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Buried Child are found in True West. It would be a sort of redundancy to repeat what has been explored in the previous
plays. In other words, Curse and Buried Child are taken as examples or paradigms of psychopathological phenomena such
as violence, narcissism, betrayal, sibling rivalry, etc.
Despite being one of theforemost andsplendid American dramatists, SamShepardhasnot obtained adequatenotice for
examining his dramas from psychoanalytic and semiotic angles. Most of the previous studies concentrated largely on the
imagesof masculinity andthe myth of the American family solely fromthematicperspectives as well ason histechniquesof
supra-realism and postmodernism . Psychoanalytic and semiotic approaches are going to be employed as basic research
methodologies in the present study. Such approaches are going to be applied to Curse and Buried Child, making use of the
psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Carl Jung. The semiotic approach proposed by C. S. Peirce
will serve in discussing the dramatic signs and symbols that permeate the plays under investigation. The theories of John
Searle, H. P. Grice, Geoffrey Leech, Brown and Levinson will help explore the nature of the verbal communication among
the family members in the plays. The gothic and the psychopathological aspects in Shepard's plays will be investigated by
applying both approaches simultaneously. There will be no separation between the approaches employed as they are going
to be provencomplementary. The research paper will alsomake use of trauma theory and Family Systems Theory (FSA) as
Shepard's playsdeal withtheinfluence of the past onthepresent and thefamilyinstitutionthat is onthe verge of collapse.
The significance of the present study lies in two major reasons. Firstly, it tackles a very noticeable phenomenon that
transcends the national border of America to the international one. The phenomenon of the contemporary alienated and
disintegrated family preoccupies the academic researchers in the fields of Social Psychology, Criminology, Psychoanalysis,
Sociology, Abnormal Psychology, Mass Media, etc. Secondly, the study contributes in enriching the research scope
interestedinthe American DreamandtheAmerican Gothic.
There are several questions the present study attempts to answer: "To what extent did Shepard reflect the cultural
aspects of the 1950s and the 1960s in Curse and Buried Child?"; "To what extent was Shepard influenced by his dramatic
forefathers O'Neill, Miller, Williams and Albee in his depiction of family problems in the plays in question?"; "Being a
myth-maker, which myths did Shepard borrowand assail in his plays?"; "What are the gothic aspects and the pathological
archetypes in the plays under investigation?"; "How are such aspects and archetypes depicted on the dramatic stage and
manifested in the characters' behaviors?" and "Dothe plays under studyrepresent an alarmto the twenty-first century society
despite being writteninthe previous century?".
The thesis is divided into three chapters and a conclusion. Despite being divided as a natural procedure, each chapter
servestheother. Chapterizationruns asfollows:
Chapter One, entitled "Sam Shepard: Cultural and Biographical Contexts", provides a cultural as well as
biographical background for Shepard's plays Curse and Buried Child. Such a two-fold background establishes the reasons
for witnessing violence, hatred, narcissism, moral degeneration and other phenomena in the plays under investigation. Inthis
chapter, the researcher conducts aCultural Materialistic approach.
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Chapter Two, entitled "The Collapse of the Contemporary Family and Society", explores the demise of the
American Dream and the decay of the American family in the plays in question from psychoanalytic and semiotic
perspectives.
Chapter Three, entitled "Psychopathological Archetypes and Gothicism in Shepard's Curse and Buried Child",
investigates the gothic aspectsandtheanti-archetypes employedby Shepardtoassault boththecomplacent notionslong held
about the nuclear family and the myth of the American Dream. In this chapter, the researcher continues in applying
psychoanalyticandsemiotic aspects.
Finally, a Conclusion sums upthemainpoints andthe findings of the thesis.
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Chapter One
Sam Shepard:
Cultural and Biographical Contexts
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Chapter One
Sam Shepard:
Cultural and Biographical Contexts
Sam Shepard (1943- ), one of the towering geniuses in the world of American drama and whose plays have been
performed on several stages of Europe, has attracted popular and academic audiences alike. Approximately twenty-seven of
his plays have been performed, not only in the US and the UK, "but in Canada and Australia as well. At least twelve plays
have been performed in London alone, where he has been living for the past four years" (Bachman 405). Shepard won a
dozen Obie awards, NewYork Drama Critics' CircleAward, a Rockefeller Playwriting Grant, the prestigious Pulitzer Prize
for Best Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child, and Edgar Award for Best Mystery Play for his provocative farce or dark
comedy The God of Hell. After Cowboys had been produced in October, 1964 by Theatre Genesis at St. Mark's In-the-
Bowery, Shepard wrote over fifty plays and won "more Obie awards than any other living playwright" (Innes 218); within
just two years (1966-1967), Shepard got three Obie awards for his Red Cross, Chicago and Icarus's Mother. His winning or
garnering of these awards and the Pulitzer Prize has brought him publicity and international literary acclaim, affirming his
impact on the contemporary theatrical milieu (Bigsby, A Critical Introduction 221). He deserves to be unquestionably
acknowledged as"the greatest American playwright of his generation" (Shewey 11).

Stanley Kauffmann, in NewRepublic, praises Shepard as being "themost talented of his generation"; EdwardAlbeeand
Elizabeth Hardwick acclaim him as "one of the three or four most gifted playwrights alive" (qtd. in Bachman 405). He
"might top any serious critics' poll for Best American Playwright" (Hoffman 25). "Not many critics would dispute the
proposition that Sam Shepard is our most interesting and exciting American playwrights" (Gilman xi). Approaching
Shepard's works through Bakhtinian dialogism, Leslie Wade claims that "No playwright in the recent history of the
American theatre has garnered more attention and acclaim than Sam Shepard" who "has fascinated audiences with an
effulgent, often hypnotic drama of American anxiety and ambition", achieving "rank and stature accorded such figures as
Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller" (1). Bigsby hails Shepard as being one of the most idiosyncratic
and "powerful voices of the 1970sand1980s" (ACritical Introduction 219).

Shepard entered the theatrical scene as a "renegade" in the Sixties, widely hailed as one of the most critically acclaimed,
prolific, protean, controversial and promising contemporary American playwrights, emerging from the Off-Off-Broadway
theatrical movement that is frequently regarded as a complete rejection of or a revolt against the commercial Broadway.
Shepard, as DeRose describes, became "one of the most talented and important playwrights of his generation" (ix). Off-Off-
Broadway, remarks Bottoms, "foundits home in cafés, churches, lofts, and basements of NewYork's Greenwich Villageand
East Village districts" and was "an intrinsic part of the counter-cultural mood of the period" ("Shepard and Off-Off-
Broadway …" 34). Discovering Shepard is "its major achievement to date" (Orzel and Smith 11). "Shepard has admitted