Buried Child Questions and Answers
by Sam Shepard

A significant aspect of Postmodernism is to offer a critique of the traditional meta- narrative structures. Shepard's play uses this in several ways. One way in which Postmodernism is used is in...

In this play, the central physical action is of one character who rarely speaks who keeps bringing piles of vegetables onstage that he has unearthed from the garden (carrots, etc.). Eventually he...

Buried Child is the Pulitzer Prize winning success of counter-culture playwright Sam Shephard. Centered on a Midwestern family in the United States, it is a macabre examination of the dark secret...

In Sam Shepard's play Buried Child we witness the slow decomposition of the once-solid American Dream. We see this through the weaknesses of the characters, the progressive destitution of the...

The American mythology of the American Dream clearly dominates the theme in the plays Death of a Salesman and Buried Child. In Death of a Salesman, the concept of the American Dream is explained...

One of the directions that you might consider taking with Shepard's view of the American Dream is his suggestion that there is a need to confront reality within it. Shepard is not maligning the...

Sam Shepherd's work Buried Child is a powerful three-act play about a broken American family. Dodge and Halie, the parents, are elderly. Dodge is in his 70s and Halie in her 60s. They have two...

Sam Shepard's Buried Child won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 and set the tone for future meditations on the decay of rural America. The play explores themes of identity in several ways, from double...

Shelly is Vince’s girlfriend. She and Vince are travelling from New Jersey and heading to Mexico to visit Vince’s father, Tilden. They make a stop-over at Dodge’s home and Shelly is disturbed by...