Post-Modern Hyper Reality and Degenerated American Values in Shepard's Buried Child
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Central Department of English
Abstract
This research attempts to depict postmodernism as a style in order to reflect
he degenerated American values in Shepard's play Buried Child. As a postmodern
drama, the play embodies ambiguity, discontinuity, pluralism, perversion,
deformation, disintegration, deconstruction and difference. And all these features are
parallel with the degenerated family values of Dodge's family. Dodge, the center of
he story is the patriarch, and his wife, Halie, presenting the old-time chauvinistic
portrayal of women being part whore, live in the same house ostensibly but are in fact
part. Shepard's intention in the play to create a narrative which communicated and
eflected the frustrations of American people but at the same time he presents the
ituation in entertaining ways through the techniques of blends between myths and
eality. The rhetorical technique of post modernism is used in order to trace the
isillusionment with the American dream and the downfall of traditional patriarch. It
eflects universal frustrations of modern American people though the setting is quite
grarian. The postmodern style which Shepard uses incorporates surrealism and
ymbolism in the realistic framework of a family drama. He is able to create images in
he imaginations of people through the use of surrealism and symbolism, evoke and
arness the experiences of his audience through its postmodern. Thus, regarding the
tyle, Buried Child incorporates many postmodern elements such as the mixing of
genres, the deconstruction of a grand narrative, and the use of pastiche and layering.