Abstract
This paper attempts to render some vivid postmodernist features in Shepard’s True West (1980), which is inspired by myths of American life and popular culture. Shepard’s True West suggests so many interesting postmodern elements. With a departure from conventional norms of character, dialogue and narrative; the elements of pastiche, subjective irony, and savage humor have become hallmarks of most of his works. These features and some of the basic traces of postmodern literature, including Lyotard’s theory of the end of meta-narratives and language game, Derrida’s deconstruction and Baudrillard’s simulation, as well as language fragmentation, uncertainty and duality, altogether, have given Shepard’s True West a postmodern atmosphere.
Highlights
This paper attempts to render a postmodernist reading of Sam Shepard's family play True West (1980)
The two-character play, True West, is about two brothers, Austin, a Hollywood screenwriter, and Lee, a loner and a thief who lives in desert
Through the course of the play, Austin and Lee, two feuding brothers, are in search of their identities and their past in a ‘modern’ sense, ignoring the fact that past and all its ideals are gone with the wing and a new postmodern atmosphere is in the air
Summary
This paper attempts to render a postmodernist reading of Sam Shepard's family play True West (1980). The study starts with a very brief introduction of True West. It is followed by its postmodernist analysis of the play within a postmodernist frame, in which the theories of the three French philosophers, Jean- François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida, are taken into account
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