A Study Of Buried Child As A Bildungsroman

Sam Shepard is known as one of the most eminent playwrights of postmodern America.His Pulitzer-winning masterpiece,Buried Child,attracts the interest of scholars and critics throughout the world.It tells a story of a dysfunctional family where nearly every member of it except the protagonist,Vince,is trapped in a tragic past caused by incest and infanticide events.Both the studies on Buried Child at home and abroad have mentioned the sharp transformation of Vince's image in this play but few have explored the reason for it and Sam Shepard's intention of characterizing such a character.This thesis is meant to explore the cause of Vince's abrupt changing personality in Buried Child by studying it as a Bildungsroman.Chapter one analyses Vince's innocence before he starts his maturation journey in his family,including exploring his suffocating growth environment and his disillusionment in attempting to fight against the tragic past of his family.Chapter two explores the sharp transformation of Vince's image,including discussing his acquiring of epiphany after he runs away from his dysfunctional growth environment again and later his change of personality.Chapter three studies Vince's finishing rituals for reaching adulthood,including the compromise he has made between his ideal and reality and his reaching adulthood by dealing with the secret past in his own way and finding himself a position in his growth environment.Vince can be regarded as a Bildungsroman protagonist because he has undergone a mental growth in this play,which is the very reason for the remarkable change of his disposition.Buried Child can be read as a Bildungsroman because its narrative pattern has all the characteristics which define a Bildungsroman.Sam Shepard seems to imply his way of reconciling with his painful memories of his family and his intention of finishing self-definition and accepting who he really is through his autobiographical creation of Buried Child.