A THEMATIC STUDY OF SELECT FAMILY PLAYS BY SAM SHEPARD

The present paper focuses on the two select plays Curse of the Starving Class and True West from Sam Shepard's family quintet. These two plays have earned Shepard a strong fame in his writing career. The paper also clarifies the themes of American culture, such as people's goals and the negative impacts on those from lower and middle class origins who are attempting to improve their lot in life in the nation's modern civilization. Sam Shepard writes social and political dramas in his plays Curse of the Starving Class and True West. They illustrate how politics and literature are related, as well as how important it is for writing to keep up with changes in society. The families struggle to save their lives, which are a representation of their social status, but they have no hope or strategy at all. The author believes that the families represent the essence of America and its culture. The themes of these plays reflect the day today life of the families from Western society. They carry some important features like violence, dysfunction in family system, heredity, the desert, dreaming, poverty, and the most important is 'curse'. These two dramas by Shepard are beautifully representing the dysfunctional family system in the Western society. In his first play Curse of the Starving Class Shepard introduces the Tate family. It's about the family of disturbed people. They are like the get people scrambled in their relationships and theirs desires. They are also the example of the dysfunctional families. Shepard believes that the family embodies the essence of America. Sam Shepard has written a series of five plays based on family trilogies. This quintet consists Curse of the Starving Class (1977) Buried Child (1979) True West (1980) Fool for Love (1983) and A Lie of the Mind (1995) these plays are not only the family plays but the representatives of the American society. The play Curse of the Starving Class opens with no frontier as the front door which is just broken by Weston, the male head of the family in scene first of the play. He is the head of the family and Ella's husband. They have two children Wesley and Emma. In Curse of the Starving Class the whole family lives under the same roof but their thoughts, emotions and even relations are totally scattered. Each character in the play has a different way of thinking. There is no consideration of emotions, realisation, feelings, ideas and thoughts. Generally in every family the decisions are made by the head of the family which is father, mother or both father and mother. But in Tate family Weston and Ella are the opposite sides of the same river. They treat themselves as the head of their family. Western is an irresponsible and a drunker father who can't even handle his own consciousness and is far away from his responsibilities. A father works hard to construct a safe frontier to his house but he is a type of father who breaks it.