Sam Shepard’s Myth-Making: Representation of the Notion of Reality and “Hyperreality” in his major plays

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M.A Thesis In English Literature

Sam Shepard’s Myth-Making: Representation of the Notion of Reality and “Hyperreality” in his major plays

ABSTRACT

Sam Shepard is one of the most prolific, influential, and celebrated playwrights that the United States has produced in contemporary era.  In his plays, America is full of traditional and mythical symbols.  He uses these emblems in order to subvert their meanings and manifest the discrepancies between characters’ living in the West and the realities they confront. In his later plays, including A Lie of the Mind, States of Shock, and Kicking a Dead Horse, Sam Shepard reflects on the traditional meanings of myth and the erasure of them in the postmodern societies.  Furthermore, the postmodern universe in these three plays is bombarded with representation and distortions of reality, and hyperreality which make reality be masked and obscure. The characters enter in simulations of reality after accepting the fact that the true reality doesn’t exist.  As a matter of fact, myths are not real; they are simulations of the past myths.  Media with its glamorous and captivating power is of the most influential mediums in constructing the hyper real.

In this study, several approaches have been applied to the plays.   The first chapter serves as an introduction. In the second chapter, the principles and theories such as the term hyperreality, the significance of myth in society and the effect of technology in the postmodern world which are depicted in the theories of Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, Fredric Jameson and Jean-François Lyotard are discussed. Chapter three and four are application. The Colonel and Stubbs in States of Shock, Hobart Struther of Kicking a Dead Horse and also the male and female figures in A Lie of the Mind represent disillusioned postmodern people who search for something “real” which they can cling.  In effect, they glorify the mythologized Old West, the myth of cowboy and National virtues as depicted in the books, movies, and television shows of their childhood. The fifth chapter serves as a conclusion.