THE CONTRADICTIONS OF MODERN MAN IN SAM SHEPARD’S TRUE WEST
SAM SHEPARD’IN VAHŞİ BATI’SINDA MODERN İNSANIN ÇELİŞKİLERİ

Author : Ömer Aytaç AYKAÇ
Number of pages : 211-222

Abstract

20th century American literature is a period and at that period there are many writers who gave the spirit of the period in a very deep way and told that the gilded image sold to the world as the American Dream is actually a nightmare. In this period, not only the novel but also the theater became one of the most important genres in explaining the spirit of the period. The collapse of the American Dream, which is often discussed by dissident writers such as Miller and Odets, is also a popular topic for Sam Shepard, one of the most important figures in the literature of the time. Born in 1943, Shepard with his Works as Buried Child (1978), Curse of the Starving Class (1977), True West (1981) give the spirit of the time and was one of the leading names of the period. One of the works that best reflects the spirit of the period is undoubtedly the True West. The Wild West, with a superficial reading gives the story of a vicious struggle between the two brothers, actually has deep meanings with a more in-depth, structuralism or periodical reading. On the visible side of the iceberg, it is emphasized that the two brothers are transformed into oppositions, and struggle to not to transform into the father figure they cannot adopt, and on the invisible part of the iceberg it deals with the transformation, deformation, failure and collapse of modern man in the capitalist system. The contradiction of modern human being, which is reflected on the two brothers, shows the great destruction of values and judgments. While revealing the rivalry between the two brothers, Shepard gives two different sides of the West of America. On one hand, the West is the place of the cowboys that subject to the films, and on the other the same West is an area that disrupted by technological improvement. While doing this, a profile of America that is a product of success, is completely separated from each other and is the place of contrasts. In this work, the struggle of contradictions and the contradictions of modern man are presented with examples from this work.

Keywords

Sam Shepard, Amerikan Dream, True West, Contradictions of Modern Man, Modernism

Read: 1,616

Download: 537