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Buried Child is one of Sam Shepard's ‘family trilogy,’ that offer surrealistic depictions of the dysfunctional American family. Shepard's central concern involves codes and their loss in modern American family. One of the most problematic aspects of Shepard's play is his viewpoint remains predominantly patriarchal. Shepard consistently does create female characters who are frequently abused, and always treated as subservient to men, and absorbed in simple activities and simplistic thoughts. Though women in Shepard's world are often victims, they are also more skilled than their oppressors in survival strategies. In Buried Child mother figure Halie's mythic-symbolic significance resists the one-sided male perspective in the play. While Shelly, the outsider, tries to violate the structure of the Dodge family which is held together by maintaining the secretㅡthe combination of infanticide and incest, all the characters of the family want their secret to remain concealed. Especially, it is one major decisive trait for Halie to keep from revealing the family's mysterious secret, for the secret of the family involves her. Throughout the play Halie abuses her husband Dodge, who is sick and helpless on the sofa, and regards the half-wit Tilden and the threatening amputee Bradley as two dysfunctional sons. On the other hand, she rewrites herself as the tragic mother, weeping for her cruelly murdered son, Ansel, by describing him in a heroic fashion to compensate for his death. After Vince, the symbolic incarnation of ‘buried child,’ enters the stage, invading the initial naturalistic setting, the play gradually reveals its ritual quality. It is clear that a kind of heroic vacuum, which paralyzes the family, will soon be filled by Vince, when he claims his inheritance after Dodge's death by the end of the play. Like the House of Oedipus, the family of Dodge is cursed by the combined acts of overrating blood relation in Tilden's incest with Halie and underrating one in Dodge's infanticide. Shepard has Vince's rebirth reconcile these antithesis, and links the mother and son with agrarian rituals as Tilden slowly climbs the stairs to deliver the skeleton of an infant wrapped in a muddy cloth to its mother at the final scene of the play. Despite the subversion of the Good Mother archetype and her contradictory nature, Halie is the figure of authority. While the patriarch is only a figure of frail but inexorable despotism, Halie, as the domineering, judgmental manipulator of all the characters in the play, asserts her motherly power. Her super-objective is to restore order in her home for a fresh start and a new beginning. Not only the mysteries and contradictions but also tantalizing allusions to death, decay, and family violence in the play seem to accumulate to form a unnerving sense of doom. Yet Buried Child does not display a tragic inevitability in the collapse of the family, for Shepard underscores the importance of rites of passage within families to reaffirm the family's continuing significance.

This paper deals with the mythic structure of Agamemnon myth with which Curse of the Starving intensifies its theme of inherited curse. Some critics have alluded to the mythic elements in the play, but none has delineated the play’s undercurrent mythic meanings related with the Agamemnon myth. Instead, many critics believe that the family in Shepard’s domestic drama is a metaphor for society and that the disintegration of the family is a metaphor for American culture. We can read a social criticism in the play through its surface manifestations. The approach of social criticism, however, seems to be an incomplete way to probe into the meanings in the undercurrent of Curse of the Starving Class since the play deals with the human condition, not merely its social manifestations. In its underlying structure the play deals intensely with the inheritance of a family curse. We may have to note that this theme of inherited curse is intensified through the undercurrent mythic structure borrowed from the Agamemnon myth in which the family curse of Tantalus is handed down through Atreus to Orestes.

In Action, Sam Shepard experiments with different methods to achieve a stable identity through three characters Shooter’s, Jeep’s, and Lupe’s existential searches. Jeep uses the images he learned from his culture in understanding and evaluating everything and everyone around him. Shooter attempts to deny his present identity and to construct a new one by denying his own memories. However, he cannot eliminate his own self-perception which asserts the continuity of his own mind. Finally, Lupe tries to find her own self and her place in the world through her observation of the other characters. However, they cannot present her any meaningful way to find her place, and Lupe’s attempt fails. In this play, Shepard’s approach to the problem of identity in close relation with vision and visual elements should be understood in the context of the twentieth-century visual culture in general. (Ewha Womans University)

Purpose: To discriminate and/or perceive phonemes is one of the most important abilities in human communication. The purpose of current study was to measure the confusing matrix, similarity, and distance of Korean phonemes based on Shepard’s law and to provide Korean speech-perceptual map. Methods: To measure the similarity and distance, twenty young listeners with normal hearing conducted the speech discrimination task, which randomly assigned consonant-vowel (CV) combinations of 18 Korean consonants with /a/ vowel under quiet environment and two signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) noisy conditions (i.e., +3 and 0 dB SNR). The data of each participant was analyzed by classic confusion matrix. Based on the data of confusion matrix, the similarity and distance were calculated using the Shepard’s law. After calculating the distance, the speech-perceptual map was designated. Results: In general, the CV similarity was increased as a level of the background noise increased. The CV distance was also decreased as the noise levels increased. In quiet condition, only 18 pairs were showed confusing to discriminate. For the most confusing CV pair was /p/-/t/ which showed similarity of 0.14. With background noise, however, the +3 and 0 dB SNR conditions showed total 61 pairs and 64 pairs, respectively. The /ph/-/th/ was most confusing pair in both +3 (1.00 for similarity) and 0 dB SNR (0.98 for similarity). Conclusion: The results of current study suggest that the development of speech-perceptual map should be considered in the clinical settings in terms of rehabilitation for the hearing impaired listeners.

대부분의 평자들은 셰파드의 ꡔ매장된 아이ꡕ를 미국의 문화적 맥락에서 혹은 가족의 붕괴 차원에서 분석하고 있다. 그러한 접근이 전혀 유효치 않은 것은 아니지만 셰파드극의 본질에 접근하기에는 한계를 지니고 있다. 가족이라든가 문화라는 한정된 어휘로는 그의 극이 담고있는 신화적 기호를 간과해버리기 때문에 셰파드극의 보편성에 접근하기는 힘들다. 가족이라든가 미국의 문화적 상황으로 포장된 그 내부를 파악하기 위해서는 우선 독자 혹은 관객은 서구문명의 뿌리깊은 신화적 기호를 이해해야 한다. 이러한 신화적 비평은 토마스 내쉬에서 시작되어 몇몇 평자들이 제시한바 있지만 이들의 논문에는 주어진 텍스트와의 거리 혹은 괴리가 나타난다. 텍스트를 제대로 읽었는지 아니면 자기들의 색다른 주장을 펼치기 위해서 일부러 텍스트를 비틀어 왜곡시키는지, 하여튼 비평을 위한 비평 내지는 출판실적을 위한 비평이라 할 수밖에 달리 표현할 방법이 없는 것 같다. 그 예로 내쉬는 빈스의 출현을 실제로 매장된 아이의 부활로 보고 있으며, “신화의 이면”을 논하는 풑젤과 웨스트폴은 다쥐의 영아살해 행위를 희생의 제의식으로 봄으로써 극에 뚜렷하게 나타나는 인과관계적인 사건을 왜곡하고 있다. 그 밖에도 사실적인 면에서 설명할 수 없는 부분들을 억지로 끼워 맞추어 해석하거나 아예 풀 수 없는 수수께끼로 치부해버리는 평자들이 많다. 그러나 실제로 이 극에 사용되는 신화들―다산 신화(fertility myth)의 전형이라 할 수 있는 오자이리스(Osiris) 신화와 에더푸스(Oedipus) 신화, 탐구여정(quest)에 나타나는 신화적 요소, 물(rain)과 불의 신화적 의미, 성서적 인유 등을 이해하면 이 수수께끼들이 풀린다. 따라서 본 논문은 ꡔ매장된 아이ꡕ에서 사용된 특정 신화, 신화적인 기호들과 이 극의 사실적 구성과의 상호관련성을 정립함으로 이 극에 나타난 운명론에 접근한다.

Hong, Eun-SookFrom contemporary American dramas back to rhapsody, there is a strong trend for fantasy in western literature. Focusing on fantasy experience, this study searches for fantasy techniques such as the movement in time and space, dream, magic, fairies, metamorphosis, rhetoric, paradox, fables, and so forth. They are used as the prompt passage to lead the characters to fantasy. Fantasy is based on western thought which is likely to explain the absolute not in the real world but in another new world. Fantasy has the power of reviving imagination and primitive thoughts so it can be an authentic literary factor and overcome the limitations of theoretical logic. Fantasy in Homer, Shakespeare, and Shepard is the attempt to escape from the rational world and to investigate ways to get through the unreal. Connecting the familiar with a whole new thing based on literary synectics, they maintain inner consistency with chiasmus of the realistic and the fantastic. As the three authors show uncertainty of each age more uncertainly, their fantasy worlds become more transparent paradoxically, affecting reality. This feature is conclusively said to be the literary power of fantasy.

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.

The Tooth of Crime (1972) by Sam Shepard (1943-2017) centers around a showdown between an established artist and a new usurper―Hoss and Crow respectively. These two artists―more specifically, pop musicians―are metaphorically portrayed as gunmen fighting for a broader market share. Even though Crow seems to win Hoss’s fame and territory in the end, he quickly becomes skeptical of his dim and precarious future. In this regard, the duel between Hoss and Crow returns no winner but rather two losers troubled with tragic perspectives. Such a tragic vision of the play is evidently related to the capitalist ideology and postmodern pop culture of the late twentieth century. In the case of Hoss, the usurped, his weakness is associated with the fact that his proletariat past has been forgotten and dissolved by the seductive aspect of capitalistic pop culture. In a society where art becomes a mere commodity, he simply seeks to accumulate wealth and fame. As for Crow, his tragic worldview is closely linked to his character as a master adapter. His only weapon as an artist in the metaphoric gun fight is the ability to copy and adapt himself to what others have already achieved. Thus, he is far from a creator but a master of parody or pastiche characteristic of postmodern art. As such, The Tooth of Crime, through a fictionalized duel of two pop artists, delves into the plight into which artists in general are driven in a highly capitalized, postmodernized society.

Well-known for a prolific writer, Shepard won a variety of awards. Shepard’s theatrical techniques are particular and salient to investigate. The West is one of his recurring themes, which are focused on American identity, American-ness, American fathers’ masculinity as well. Sam Shepard as a successor to tradition of American plays embodies his peculiar realism on the stage, his theatrical techniques sums up representation of using real props, immediacy and transformation techniques. His Family Trilogy and Family Plays are representative ones to show his theatricalism. This study investigates Sam Shepard's Fool for Love, which belongs to his Family Plays. Its main focus is on spatial division and temporal reversal with a view of incestuous relationships between siblings. This stage has conscious and subconscious spaces which are revealed by dividing characters’ areas onstage. Among them, women's space seems relatively empty like the picture the Old Man pointed out. There certainly exists May, but there is no room for their mothers despite providing their father’s space. Moreover, the father figure shows authorities to cross the border between reality and fantasy. In particular, the Old Man’s utterance has control over Eddie. Memories of the characters onstage are connected to passage of time; especially to show the Old Man’s past duality. For that reason, Eddie and May are inseparably stuck in rhetorical topography of love. Therefore, their foolishness for love is about the Old Man’s dual life with his two families. Like a quote by Archbishop Anthony Bloom, “The proper response to love is to accept it. There is nothing to do.”

Entering the 1990s, Shepard's dramatic themes have changed from American families and spiritual rebirth of American society to the wars caused by the States and newly rising global circumstances. After the September 11 attacks which served as midwives to the birth of the new social imaginary colored by imperial globalism, Shepard adheres to imperial America as a major dramatic theme and a social background. The God of Hell prepares the netwar between the megamachine of imperialist Welch and the war machine of Plutonium-contaminated Haynes. Haynes comes to the American farmland to constitute a multitude network with Frank and Emma who are farming without the Bush administration's agricultural subsidies. The characters in The God of Hell become crippled by the practices of imperial globalism such as global capital and environmental contamination. One of these practices is the mutilation. The peak of the mutilation is grotesquely shown by the tethered genitals which represent the disruption of the power process and cause the psychological suffering. One way to confront the counterinsurgency actions taken by imperial globalism is to act like the nine-headed Hydra which generates another head upon being cut off. Although there is no way of reforming the global system so as to prevent it from depriving the people of dignity and autonomy, The God of Hell shows the audience the possibility of the multitude like those of Hydra. Here the audience gets a glimpse of Shepard's ability to create ‘factional historiography’ in which he combines a historical fact and fictional imagination.

Kim, YungdukShepard has openly expressed his fascination with American cowboys, and his True West (1980) represents the frontier myth as an integral part of American life. Focusing on America's concept of the cowboy, the play dramatizes the American male quest for masculinity marked by rugged individualism and independence. Shepard's male characters cherish fantasies of freedom and adventure, and of escape from familial responsibilities and from strictures of civilization, but their pursuit of the idealized cowboy life results in adolescent sibling rivalry and male violence. Their "acting out" of cowboy masculinity shows that it is not an essence but a performance whereby they repeat the ideals of the American cowboy. The mythical American West cannot be materialized in the present, nor can it be embodied in a living cowboy. In Shepard's play, cowboys/fathers as role models are either dead or absent; the brothers in the final tableau end up getting lost in a vast empty space, alienated both from the idealized past of the frontier and from the present wasteland of the city. Cowboy masculinity becomes simply one of the American mythologies that fails to give male characters any stable identity. They are fractured subjects shifting in their masculine pursuits and performances. In this seemingly male-oriented play, Shepard demythisizes the myth of the West and in so doing deconstructs cowboy masculinity.

This article aims to explore the twisted masculinity and oppressed femininity of the American White family in Fool for Love. The existing criticism focusing on the characters of the play falls into two: battle of irreconcilable passion; anguished search for identity. However, the former overlooks the importance of The Old Man that endows the play with historical and mythical dimension. On the contrary, the latter recognizes the significant role of The Old Man, but falls into the error of logical contradictions and insufficient discussion. This article will analyze The Old Man, Eddie, and May in detail and make clear the destructive influence of the myth of the American West on their respective masculinity and femininity. The Old Man evinces contorted masculinity and subjugated femininity through inner violence, heavy drinking, and fear of domestication. Eddie is driven by an intense competitiveness and attempts to win May's affection through manly display. He inherits heavy drinking, living a double life of divided love, and fear of emotional commitment from The Old Man, On the other hand, May inherits inner violence and fear of his subjection to the home from The Old Man. Her violent action against Eddie is the example of the former and her escape from the motel room just after Eddie's final exit is that of the latter. She cannot escape from The Old Man's destructive influence in spite of her failure to recognize it. Conclusively, Fool for Love is the poetic figuration of the disastrous influence of the delusive ideology of machismo on the American White family.

This paper argues that Paris, Texas, although officially considered a film by Wim Wenders, takes a crucial place in the later development of Sam Shepard’s playwriting after the enormous critical and popular success of the so-called Family Trilogy. The Family Trilogy, which brought to Shepard the belated recognition outside the avant-garde theater circle including the Pulitzer Prize, are indeed problematic. These closely related works, in short, can be defined as intense male melodrama. These peculiar family dramas can be said to mystify and elevate the bond connecting the male family members as the truer reality they are fated to reach. Soon, Shepard, however, quit playwriting and, instead, began to pursue various collaborative projects including writing the script of Paris, Texas. When he returned to playwriting, the completely changed themes and styles emerged. After first dealing with romantic relation between woman and man through Fool for Love, Shepard surprisingly produced a serious feminist play, A Lie of the Mind. The play features a group of women who succeed in envisioning new ways of life after breaking free from the devastating influence of the male family members. The radical transformations of the female characters are engendered by the critique of the American male mentality tracing back to the most potent national myth; namely, the frontier myth. Paris, Texas anticipates the play in various ways, especially the criticism of male mentality. The movie’s criticism proves quite effective through its realistic depiction of the American landscape, particularly, its desert area. Simply being represented as harshly threatening nature, this mythical male space in Shepardian version of the　frontier myth is thoroughly demystified. Also, some realistic stylistic ideas necessary for the critical thematics of A Lie of the Mind seem to be derived from Paris, Texas: an observer-like male character questioning problematic male characters' self-centered, distorted memory and perception; the more authentic and, at the same time, fluid realism full of cinematic impression replacing the more closed, quite expressionistic stage arrangement of the Family Trilogy.

With The States of Shock, Sam Shepard returned to his original territory, American psyche, and started to champion the noble cause of peace and harmony. The latest play, The God of Hell, was his reaction to the 911 and its aftermath, especially the on-going Iraq War, as the former was his reaction to the American public’s favourable reception of the Gulf War in 1991. When the World Was Green (A Chef’s Fable), which he created in collaboration with Joseph Chaikin, strongly emphasizes the importance of mutual understanding and open-mindedness. In his three pacifist dramas, Shepard argues that Americans’ fear of unknown enemy should be replaced by their efforts to understand others and achieve harmony with them. The president Roosevelt’s message?“Only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”?is what Shepard is eager to deliver to his American audience. To summarize his arguments, Americans’ distrust and fear of others are the real enemy of contemporary Americans. The pacifist dramas adopted many elements from his plays written in the 1960s in terms of stagecraft and subject matter. Experimental mood is another similarity. However, their political implications and pacifist messages distinguish them from his previous works. Shepard’s changes in the pacifist dramas make us curious about what kind of plays he will write in the future.

The absence of father is one of the issues most frequently visited by Sam Shepard; fathers absent from their home and wandering in exile in the desert are found in many works of Shepard such as Holy Ghostly (1969), True West (1980), Fool for Love (1983), Silent Tongue (1992), The Late Henry Moss (2000), and more.Patricide appears, in his works, as just one of many strategies to make fathers absent even though it sounds an extremely unethical crime. In fact, Shepard's world seems to present profound perversity and uncomfortable strangeness to realistic eyes. We must understand that mythical and psychological stages are what he aimed to create not realistic ones since he tried to produce modern myths about those who psychologically struggle to cope with the symbolic world of modern times.This paper analyzes Holy Ghostly, The Late Henry Moss, and Silent Tongue in order to argue that first, patricide is a symbolic death of the imaginary father; second, the murdered father and the murderous son can enter the symbolic order by the death of the father; third, an imaginary association with the outdated ideology of Eurocentric machoism is the other side of the fathers who identity themselves with and keep hold of the ideology.

Jung, Byung-EonThis essay is a reading of True West as a play of fictive narrative commenting on Shepard's new style of writing by focusing on the relationship between two distinctive writing styles reflected by two characters in conjunction with geographical images. This analysis suggests a metadramatic reading based on Shepard's desire to create a new play form in so far as True West addresses the nature of his act of composition. Since Curse of the Starving Class (1976), he has drastically changed his writing style by introducing the realistic tradition to the family trilogy mainly by linking the themes of family and love. In True West, Shepard especially juxtaposes the East or northern California as a space for Austin, "Shepard the legitimate playwright," with the West as a space for his brother Lee's "asocial, renegade tendencies." These two spaces represent the two natures of Shepard as playwright. His desire for "a whole different way of writing," confessed at an interview, is expressed at the end by the "desert-like landscape" of Austin and Lee as a metaphor for the harmonious equilibrium of Shepard's two kinds of style: realism and surrealism, order and chaos. True West is a play that involves a significant degree of self-consciousness about the act of writing as a strategy for surviving the difficult climate of the American theatre during the seventies.