Change and Transformation
A central theme in True West is the shifting dynamic of personality traits between the brothers, Austin and Lee, as their screenplay competition heats up. At the start, they are complete opposites: Austin is the polished, traditional sibling, diligently working on his script for Hollywood producer Saul Kimmer. In contrast, Lee is wild and unsociable, planning local burglaries. By the end of the play, however, Lee's movie concept wins Kimmer's approval, and he tries to be productive, while Austin begins to mimic Lee's behavior of excessive drinking and minor theft.
The catalyst for this transformation is Saul Kimmer, the Hollywood producer, and the opportunities he presents. Initially, Austin seems successful and self-assured as a writer, with Kimmer offering him his "big break"—a shot at fame and wealth within his traditional life. Austin represents a stable, middle-class family man with a wife and children "up north," an Ivy League background, and a determination to succeed through hard work in the competitive entertainment industry. However, when Kimmer chooses Lee's script over Austin's, Austin's sense of superiority collapses. This rejection dismantles his self-image, triggering an identity crisis. Austin struggles with the realization that his intelligence, ambition, and talent might not be enough to achieve his goals, leaving him feeling empty ("there's nothing real down here, Lee! Least of all me!"). In this vulnerable state, Austin experiments with Lee's lifestyle, embracing irresponsibility, stealing toasters, and considering leaving his conventional life for one filled with crime and adventure.
For Lee, Kimmer represents more than just fame and fortune; he symbolizes a chance to be on equal footing—or even superior—to Austin, and to gain legitimacy in the conventional world. Initially approaching Kimmer as a con artist, a role he frequently assumes, Lee changes when he sees a path to respectability. He becomes a comically desperate figure, striving to attain the middle-class comfort he once mocked.
The simplest explanation for these character reversals is that Shepard illustrates the complexity and deceptiveness of reality. Things are often not as they appear; the seemingly stable middle-class provider may not be as secure as he seems. Shepard also suggests that a violent, primal nature lies just beneath the surface of all humans, waiting for sufficiently challenging circumstances to break through the facade and reveal the underlying capacity for horror.
Ultimately, Shepard proposes that what we consider personality, character, and identity might merely be acts we perform for others. Upon closer inspection, this role-playing doesn't genuinely reveal a person's true nature. One might infer that an individual deeply engaged in this role-playing could even convince themselves that their constructed identity is authentic. When confronted with the possibility that this role may not reflect their true self, the realization can be traumatic, as it is for Austin.
In Lee's situation, the persona he presents at the start of the play is probably his true self. He has become indifferent to others' judgments about his conduct, enabling him to follow any impulse he experiences. However, when Kimmer takes his film idea seriously, Lee starts to see the benefits of adopting a different persona. Much like Austin at the beginning of the play, Lee learns to restrain his more basic instincts in order to achieve respect and financial success.
Identity: the Search for Self
At the beginning of the play, Austin and Lee, like many people, assume their identities are fixed and unchanging, not giving them much thought. Austin feels relatively secure and "in charge" even when confronted with Lee's menacing behavior. However, when Kimmer dismisses his movie concept in Scene 6, Austin's confidence is shattered. He repeatedly uses the word "I" in an effort to...
(This entire section contains 549 words.)
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hold onto his former identity—"I drive on the freeway every day. I swallow the smog. I watch the news in color. I shop in the Safeway. I'm the one who's in touch! Not him!"
In the next scene, Austin is only truly connected to the alcohol he drinks as he struggles to find a new identity. Disconnected from his previous self, he considers adopting Lee's persona: "well, maybe I oughta' go out and try my hand at your trade. Since you're doing so good at mine." He also decides to live in the desert, like Lee, as he now believes "there's nothin' down here for me. There never was.... I keep finding myself getting off the freeway at familiar landmarks that turn out to be unfamiliar." Perhaps most notably, he even begins to physically provoke Lee, exploring the possibility that he could rival Lee in terms of physical strength. This idea is tested at the play's conclusion when he appears to have overpowered and strangled Lee.
At the outset of the play, Lee is very protective of his self-image. Partly envying Austin's sophistication, Lee pretends to share similar refinement: "you got coffee?... Real coffee? From the bean?" Upset by their mother's choice of Austin as her preferred house-sitter, Lee asserts his own domestic skills: "she might’ve just as easily asked me to take care of her place as you.... I mean I know how to water plants." However, Lee most confidently identifies as a rugged individual and desert survivor. But when Kimmer tempts him with the idea of becoming more conventional and sophisticated, Lee temporarily abandons his desert-dweller identity and adopts a new persona: "I'm a screenwriter now! I'm legitimate." When this new persona fails, Lee laments, "here I am again in a desperate situation! This would never happen out on the desert. I would never be in this kinda' situation out on the desert."
The resolution of these identity struggles occurs at the play's end when Lee rises from the floor with the phone cord around his neck, revealing that Austin has not physically overcome him. Lee remains the stronger and more cunning of the two. He decides to abandon his attempt to change his identity and plans to return to the desert, intending to bring "something authentic" to feel more "civilized." For Austin, the future is more uncertain, yet he is likely to carry a more nuanced sense of self than before.
During a 1980 interview with Robert Coe for the New York Times Magazine, Shepard expressed that in True West, he "wanted to write a play about double nature, one that wouldn't be symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff. I just wanted to give a taste of what it feels like to be two-sided. It's a real thing, double nature. I think we're split in a much more devastating way than psychology can ever reveal.... It's something we've got to live with."
Illusion vs. Reality
While at its heart True West portrays the classic philosophical problem of distinguishing illusion from reality, it extends this theme to the dilemma the artist encounters in creating art that is true to life. Both thematic concerns are centered on the brothers’ struggle to write a real Western story.
The play opens with the brothers’ disagreeing on where the real West is. In essence, they are arguing over reality and illusion. Lee, the idealist, maintains that the West has been “wiped out” by development, while Austin, the pragmatist, accepts the West as the land of freeways and Safeways. However, both brothers fail to recognize the inevitable change occurring in their idealized childhood West and in themselves as well even as it occurs in the play. While Lee wishes for Austin’s pragmatic world, Austin begins to idealize Lee’s desert life. He says to Lee that “there’s nothing real down here” for him, but Lee punctures Austin’s ideal West: “Do you actually think I chose to live out in the middle a’ nowhere? Do ya’? Ya’ think it’s some kinda philosophical decision I took or somethin’?” The brothers’ conflict suggests a paradoxical definition of reality as an uneasy combination of illusion and experience, producing the myths which are necessary for psychic survival.
The image of the brothers circling in the devastated kitchen offers a provocative but inconclusive ending. Some critics have suggested that this disturbing final scene reflects Sam Shepard’s view of life as an endless struggle between illusion and reality, passion and reason; to be true, art must portray this struggle without a neat resolution.
The Artist's Inner Conflict
The brothers’ reversal of roles in act 2 reflects the inner conflict of the artist as a divided self. Each brother represents one requisite side of the artist’s creativity: Lee, emotive, Dionysian; Austin, rational, Apollonian. As Kimmer says, each brother needs the other to create. However, each brother sees the other’s strengths not as complementing but as replacing his own. Their struggle delineates the difficult, if not impossible task of harmonizing emotion and intellect in the creation of art, since by nature each side seeks to dominate the other. Only after the brothers exchange roles, climaxing in the humorous scene with the stolen toasters, do they recognize their need for this union.
