Curse of the Starving Class | Shepard’s Family Trilogy and the Conventions of Modern Realism
In the following essay excerpt, the author discusses
Shepard’s merging of archetypal familial
relationship paradigms with the realism associated
with his style.
Curse of the Starving Class displays its schematic
organisation by dividing up most of its text among
four principal family member/speakers in a artifi-
cially symmetrical scheme—Weston/Wesley; Ella/
Emma. This contrived conflation of names suggests,
early in the play, that the text relates the
younger figures to the older; and, as the play progresses,
we see certain ways in which the children
replicate or substitute for their parents. In general,
Curse voices and reiterates a process in which selfidentification
...
[The entire page is 2282 words long]
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