The Vanishing Frontier
From Sam Shepard's debut play Cowboys to his latest works, his narratives are heavily infused with themes of cowboys, frontiersmen, and pioneers. When interviewed by Theatre Quarterly in 1974 about his focus on cowboys, Shepard explained:
The allure of cowboys lies in their intriguing nature—these young men, often just sixteen or seventeen, who chose to reject the East Coast lifestyle and ventured into the vast unknown, living by their own rules.
Shepard's intrigue with Western frontier imagery stems from his belief that a significant aspect of the American spirit has faded away.
In Curse of the Starving Class, the central family grapples with an undefined feeling that a frontier has vanished. Residing in southern California, a region once a genuine frontier and later a land of hope for impoverished migrants during the Great Depression, they witness its transformation from fertile farmland to the sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles. Each family member reacts differently to these changes. Ella rejects it entirely, aiming to sell their home and move to Europe, the antithesis of a frontier. Weston is disoriented, defeated, and intoxicated, longing to acquire land in an even more desolate frontier—the desert. The children idealize the frontier; Emma envisions herself as a cinematic character, living in a remote town, while Wesley, echoing his father, yearns for an authentic frontier in Alaska.
Though Shepard has dismissed the notion that his plays are social critiques, Curse of the Starving Class feels like one. In this story, the frontier vanishes due to exploitative capitalism, embodied by Taylor, the lawyer intent on purchasing the family's home to develop a suburb, and who deceives Weston into acquiring worthless land. Yet, capitalism and avarice also wreak havoc on a personal level, devastating the family. Ellis, aware of Weston's alcoholism and irresponsibility, nonetheless profits from his drinking and exploits him by buying his house. The frontier, once a place where individuals could shape their destinies, is entirely absent in this narrative, replaced by the "curse" afflicting this family and the "starving class" they represent.
Family Curses
In a certain sense, Curse of the Starving Class serves as a modern retelling of one of the oldest known play cycles, Aeschylus’ Oresteia. This trilogy, penned in the fifth century B.C.E., recounts the tale of the house of Agamemnon, a Greek hero who curses his family by sacrificing his daughter, Iphigenia, to secure favorable winds for his army’s journey to Troy. During the decade he spends at the Trojan War, his wife, Clytemnestra, enters into a relationship with another man, and upon Agamemnon's return, she and her lover murder him. Agamemnon's son, Orestes, must avenge his father's death. The cycle of violence seems endless—each murder demands another—until divine intervention by the gods breaks the chain.
The family in Curse of the Starving Class appears similarly fated. They are plagued by a "curse" unique to them, not merely one affecting their social class. In the second act, Ella mentions that this curse is "invisible but it’s there. It’s always there. It comes onto us like a nightmare." At various points, characters describe the curse as a germ, an infection, or nitroglycerin in their blood. This curse condemns them to violence, poverty, and self-destruction, ultimately leading to the disintegration of the family unit. Weston’s alcoholism tears the family apart and literally damages the house when he breaks down the door. Meanwhile, Ella engages in an affair with the lawyer attempting to seize their home. Emma, upon entering womanhood (symbolized by her first menstrual period), embarks on a path of crime and violence.
However, Wesley emerges as the true embodiment of the curse. At...
(This entire section contains 379 words.)
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the play's beginning, he delivers a lengthy monologue recounting his father's previous night of rage. During this monologue, he alternates between first and third person, as if observing events from an external perspective. Food, representing a healthy family, is desecrated when he urinates on his sister's diagram of how to cut up a frying chicken. By the play's conclusion, after Weston sobers up and decides to return to the family, Wesley dons Weston’s old tattered clothes and slaughters the lamb, which partly symbolizes the family's fragility. As Wesley reaches adulthood, the curse consumes him, compelling him to act in ways that ensure his own and his family's destruction.
Violation of the Land and Disintegration of the Nuclear Family
Curse of the Starving Class examines themes of the violation of the land and the disintegration of the nuclear family. It is a very American play, about naïveté, about family relationships and how these relationships are perceived. Taylor seems to sum it all up in act 2 when he complains, “You people carry on as though the whole world revolved around your petty little existence.” Worse, each person seems isolated within the family, unaware of the others’ goals and aspirations. Wesley and Emma are genuinely upset at the prospect of the loss of their home, while Weston has spent most of his time trying to break out of its confinement. Ella flatters herself that Taylor is interested in her and is devastated when she discovers that it was only the property he wanted. None of the Tates seems to realize that there is a profit to be made in dividing the land, converting it from farming to tracts for low-cost housing.
Symbolism and Family Dynamics
These themes are also suggested symbolically. In his directions at the start of the play, after specifying the position of a table, Sam Shepard notes, “Four mismatched metal chairs are set one at each side of the table.” The chairs suggest the differences among the family members. Emma’s 4-H uniform is a marked contrast to Wesley’s sweatshirt and jeans. No sooner does Ella, wearing a dress and white gloves, leave with Taylor than Weston enters in his shabby outfit. At the same time, there is a connection between these characters, attested by the similarity of their names. When Emma first meets Taylor, she assures him that there is something in the family, especially within the men, a sort of hereditary “liquid dynamite.” In the third act, when Wesley comes in wearing Weston’s clothes, his only explanation is, “They fit me.” Ironically, Emma is the one who explodes, but that is part of the destructiveness of family life. At the end of the drama, it is easy to see that Weston and Ella have been like the eagle and the cat: In their ceaseless conflict they have destroyed themselves and their children.
Sense of Fate and Critique of the American Dream
Finally, there is, as the title of the play suggests, a sense of fate at work, the unfolding of a curse. Critics have observed that Emma, experiencing menstruation, literally has “the curse.” Emma shouts, “WE DON’T BELONG TO THE STARVING CLASS!” The artichokes are important in this context. The quantity Weston brings home suggests abundance, but they are in no way a staple, and even Weston cannot stand to smell them cooking. The artichokes, then, like Weston’s plans for the future, provide no sustenance. These people need emotional contact more than food to stave off their hunger. Shepard has often been seen as a critic of the American Dream, but he is also a proponent of American values; in Curse of the Starving Class he can be seen to be lamenting their loss.