ARTICLE
TITLE

A Postmodernist Reading of Sam Shepard’s True West

SUMMARY

This paper attempts to render some vivid postmodernist features in Shepard’s True West (1980), which is inspired by myths of American life and popular culture. Shepard’s True West suggests so many interesting postmodern elements. With a departure from conventional norms of character, dialogue and narrative; the elements of pastiche, subjective irony, and savage humor have become hallmarks of most of his works. These features and some of the basic traces of postmodern literature, including Lyotard’s theory of the end of meta-narratives and language game, Derrida’s deconstruction and Baudrillard’s simulation, as well as language fragmentation, uncertainty and duality,  altogether, have given Shepard’s True West a postmodern atmosphere. 

 Articles related

Gregory H. Graham-Smith    

AbstractThis article attempted to reclaim Patrick White’s final novel, Memoirs of Many in One, from the margins of White scholarship. The novel was a significant omission from the first major study of White’s oeuvre to appear in over 25 years, entitled R... see more

Revista: Literator

Wiyatmi Wiyatmi    

            The patriarchal system which is dominant in most ethnic groups in Indonesia has brought up narratives that favor men. As a result, men are the main characters and heroes in a number of Indonesian folk literature,... see more

Revista: Litera

William Valentine Redmond    

 This article reflects on the many opinions about the author of the of Crônica da casa assassinada as a modernist or postmodernist writer.  Examining the narrative techniques used by the author, maybe influenced by his wide reading of foreign l... see more

Revista: Scripta

Banani Biswas    

This paper involves a study on Aphra Ben’s Oroonoko (1688) which is considered by many as the first black narrative of English literature, an abolitionist text, while observed by some others as extremely colonialist. The objective of this study is to exa... see more


Adina Sorian    

David Mitchell’s number9dream (2001) has been received as a ‘postmodern Bildungsroman’ that redefines the coming-of-age narrative through a postmodern frame. Useful as this definition may be in distinguishing Mitchell’s novel from the traditional coming-... see more