In Sam Shepard

Averi Warren Cheryl Hall THR 100-2D 2-23-2016 My World or Real World In Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, Shepard creates a family of characters that like to be separated from the outside world. This family’s desire of solitude becomes one of the central themes throughout the play. However, there are a few characters that come in and break this form of isolation and reveal that their world is not real. It is the presence of Shelly that causes the rest of the family to fall into complete turmoil due to the fact that they were coming to the reality of how the real world is. As Dodge said, “Things keep happening while you’re upstairs, ya know. The world doesn’t stop just because you’re upstairs” (Shepard 15). Although the family is secluded from the world at their present state, they were not always like this. They were once a happy and prospering family. As Shelly said, “All the kids are standing out in the corn. They’re all waving these big straw hats. One of them doesn’t have a hat” (Shepard 54). While the family was happy at one point in time, it was that baby that was not wearing a hat that ruined it all. As Dodge said, “Halie had this kid see. This baby boy. She had it. I let her have it on her own. All the other boys I had the best doctors, the best nurses, everything. This one I let her have by herself” (Shepard 66). Dodge knew the child not his, but his own son’s. As Dodge said, “All the boys knew. Tilden knew” (Shepard 66). Dodge could not get to accept the fact that his first grandson was his wife’s own son. He was so enraged that he felt the need to murder the child. As Dodge said, “I killed it. I drowned it. Just like the runt of a litter” (Shepard 67). This caused the entire family’s world to change. They began to tell themselves a web of lies in order to form a new reality to help forget the terrible things that had happened. As Dodge said, “We were a well-established family once” (Shepard 66). This caused the family to live a life of isolation from all of the outsiders, but in reality, they made themselves become the outsiders. The one person that had the ability to break this family’s world was Shelly. She took it upon herself as a challenge. She wanted to have the family come to the truth with themselves. As Shelly said, “Illuminate me” (Shepard 34). The second Shelly noticed that Vince’s own family did not recognize him, she knew that there was something wrong. She wanted to figure out why and help them if she could. As Shelly said, “He doesn’t even know who you are” (Shepard 33). She did this by talking to Dodge about the life he use to have, but he refused to acknowledge it. As Dodge said, “That isn’t me! That never was me! This is me. Right here. This is it” (Shepard 54). Halie was the same too. She would constantly talk about her son Ansel like he was a hero and an infamous basketball player. As Halie said, “Ansel was a great basketball player. Make no mistake. One of the greatest” (Shepard 59). However, Bradley disagreed with her saying he never played. As Bradley angrily said, “He never played basketball” (Shepard 59). The moment when Tilden revealed to Shelly about the death of a child, Shelly’s curiosity only grew more. This is where the conflict of the play began. As Tilden said, “Cops looked for it. Neighbors. Nobody came” (Shepard 47). It was Shelly’s desire that made her to want to rise to the challenge to having the family coming to reality with one another on what really happened. Shelly would mention about the pictures in Halie’s room to Dodge to get hints about happened to the child. As Shelly said, “She’s looking down at the baby like it was somebody else’s. Like it didn’t even belong to her” (Shepard 55). She would intentionally make Dodge more upset with each interaction in order to cause him to expel more information. Shelly’s motive to get Dodge to reveal more details about the family’s past involves taking advantage of how prideful he is. She started to question his manhood, his success in life, and his abilities to do simple everyday tasks. Also, she compared his present self to his past self. For example, Shelly was teasing whether or not if Dodge could even move Bradley’s prosthetic leg. As Shelly said, “But you’d actually do it if you could” (Shepard 53). This smart remark caused Dodge to grow into a rampage about how she had the audacity to ask something like that. DODGE: Don’t you dare think I am not half the man I use to be! I am even more of a man than I have ever been. I only get manlier each day! I can do ANYTHING that you could put to your wildest imagination. I can do the impossible. After this moment, Shelly knew that she had him. She knows that he is the type of man that would talk about anything once he was angry. Dodge’s rampage was not for Shelly, but for himself. It served as a self-reminder, or self-booster, to make him feel that he is still the man he always was no matter what anyone said. He felt embarrassed with himself, and the fact that Bradley was in the room did not help either. No one wants to be made a fool in front of his own child, and even in his own house. As Dodge said, “Don’t sit there sippin’ your bouillon and judging me! This is my house” (Shepard 53). Shelly knew that she would ultimately get what she wanted to know from Dodge easily compared to everyone else in the family. The play reached a crisis when Shelly threw Halie’s saucer at the wall to get everyone’s attention, and this lead to the climax of the play. As Shelly said, “I am here! I am standing right here in front of you. I am breathing. I am speaking. I am alive! I exist. DO YOU SEE ME” (Shepard 62). All of this anger that Shelly had built up came from the family ignoring her. They were paying her no mind and too focused in their own world. Shelly wanted them to come out of it. As Dodge said, “She thinks she’s gonna suddenly bring everything out into the open after all these years” (Shepard 65). She knew no one would break, but Dodge. When Dodge began to say what had happened, no one in the family would try to get him to stop. They did not want to see it come to their reality. As Bradley said, “No! Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t remember anything” (Shepard 65). The climax of the play was when Dodge began to reveal the past. He was the only one who would admit it, but Shelly was the one who lead him to do it. As Dodge spilled the beans, the family still tried to not acknowledge it. Halie would talk more about how Ansel would have stopped it if he was there. As Halie said, “He was a hero” (Shepard 67). The presence of an outsider led the family to go into complete turmoil, because it was not part of their reality. Shelly tried to make them come to the real world, and it tore them apart. All of the stress led Dodge to die, because he could not handle it all for his age. Halie was able to break away from their world. Halie began to see all of the crops in her own backyard that Tilden spoke of. Tilden was always in between both realities. However, he came out of it once he showed up in the house with his dead child in his arms. As Halie said, “Good hard rain. Takes everything straight down deep to the roots. The rest takes care of itself. You can’t force a thing to grow. You can’t interfere with it. You just gotta wait ‘til it pops up out of the ground” (Shepard 73). Shepard wrote this quote as a form of symbolism. Shelly was the rain that made everyone see their own roots, and from that the rest took its course. Works Cited Shepard, Sam. Buried Child. New York: Urizen, 1979. Print. Warren 5