FAILURE OF FAMILY REINTEGRATION INTO HOME FROM EARLY PLAYS OF SAM SHEPARD

Abstract

Sam Shepard is not just a “western essayist”, but one who has the capacity to assess contemporary American culture through the symbols and topics of conventional Western American writing. His plays follow the liquidation of American society, in which characters are no more coordinated into their reality by adherence to habitual qualities and standards. Shepard raises the icons of this convention to send them slamming from a more prominent stature, delineates the whole-world destroying end of customary American society in which long-held qualities, especially those celebrated in Western American writing, are ceremonially exorcized to make space for some new, up till now unheard of America. Shepard’s plays don’t advance sequentially to these ends. Shepard, depicts the search for home within contemporary American culture. In this paper, we are focusing on Shepard’s selected plays to depict the failure of family reintegration into Home or Family. Shepard’s Fourteen Hundred Thousand (1967), The Unseen Hand (1972) and Mad Dog Blues (1972). Fourteen Hundred Thousand - is a play about Husband and Wife who tries to build a bookshelf. The Unseen Hand - is a play about Morphan brothers who lives far away from their home. Mad Dog Blues - this play is all about a couple of best friends who were unhappy with their misguided lives set off to discover a treasure.