A Study On Trauma Narrative In Sam Shepard's Plays

Sam Shepard is one of the important American contemporary playwrights,he starts play-writing career since 1960 s and goes on till the 21 st century,producing more than 50 plays all together.Sam Shepard expresses physical and psychological sufferings,shoulders social responsibilities,witnesses historical traumas,reflects historical disasters and seeks treatments in the way of trauma narrative.Trauma narrative originate from love and sympathy for human being's tragic living and undertake the mission of reflecting on lessons and seeking treatments,This is the significance of studying Sam Shepard's play from the perspective of trauma narrative.This study focuses on the trauma narrative in Sam Shepard's plays from four aspects: theme,characters,texts and theater.These four construct basic elements of understanding the thought-provoking connotation and artistic value of Sam Shepard's plays in the way of interweaving and interacting.This study starts from discussing the relationships between Shepard and trauma narrative.Traumatic themes part contain three aspects,family,historical and cultural trauma.Family trauma includes trauma caused by alienated,ethical relations,female trauma by family patriarchal violence and homeless trauma in the lonely journey.Shepard also combines personal trauma with historical trauma in American colonial expansion,westward movement,industrialization and modernization,and immigration waves in the reflective and critical style.Cultural trauma concerns war trauma and heroism in Golf War,grief and political criticism in Terrorist attacks.Fallen and irresponsible fathers,alienated and indifferent mothers,violent and resentful sons are group portraits of typical traumatic characters in family trauma exhibition area,Though there are many differences in different plays they may have same or similar roles in narration.Ghost characters bear the humanistic care and social criticism,whose action privileges match character identity,playing the role of disturbing narrative process.Trauma theme expression and character creation in Shepard's plays rely on literary techniques and stage arts.Shepard employs cross-textual narrative characteristics of inter-texts and meta-texts in the plays as narrative strategies to enrich trauma themes and character images,to expand the dimensions of trauma representation.He also employs stream-of-consciousness language style to mimic traumatic memory and fantasy text to reveal trauma and anxiety.Literary drama texts with profound connotation are not the only fascinating aspects,stage art with abundant images,exciting sound and light effects,and metaphorical scenes are also fascinating.Rich stage imagery can externalize characters' inner trauma by employing visible props to symbolize invisible traumatic psychology.The art of sound,light and color on drama stages can render trauma atmosphere and enhance audiences' sensory.And metaphoric scenes contain traumatic connotation.This study not only benefits the aesthetic research of drama,but also the reflection on human suffering and living circumstances.