True West and Its Relation with the American Dream

The main approach of this paper is the discourse analysis of the American Dream and the critical approach of American modern or new drama toward this discourse in the True West Play by Sam Shepard. The discourses have an important role in each society. The main cultural and social events are under the effect of a discourse or reaction to it. In twentieth-Century, the writers, artists, and the others considered the significance of thought in the art and also the effect of discourses in their works. The contemporary artists all consider the meta-narrations in their works as the focus of their arts. Sam Shepard, as one of the great play writers of America, is one of them who have written several plays about the American dreams. American dream is one of the most important of contemporary discourses. This kind of discourse played a role as a country in the formation of America and a main role toward immigration to America. For this reason, all political, cultural and economical aspects of this country are under the effect of these discourses. Therefore, in order to understand the contemporary theatre of America, analysis of American dream is necessary. True West play is one of the best works which shows the critical analysis approach of America modern drama to this discourse. This work criticizes and tries to clarify the hidden layers. American theatre, against the American cinema, shows, presents and criticizes the violent viewpoints as well as the other hidden layers of American Dream. This critical approach existed before in the American theatre and we can see this approach in the works of Arthur Miller, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, and Tennessee Williams. In fact, although, the theater of America does not have a long history, it separated its way from Europe by the aid of the above-mentioned writers in the domain of dramatic literature. This critical approach of American Theatre toward this discourse was continued after Second World War by the arrival of great writer called Edward Albee and by writing a play called ‘American Dream” and also "who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?" This process again continued after Edward Albee. The best samples of this approach are limited to the works of Sam Shepard such as True West play who criticized this discourse by presenting its effects in the human relationships. This research focuses on the analysis of "True West" play as one of the most important plays by Sam Shepard and the American modern drama is based on its relation with the American Dream discourse. This is done with an aim to demonstrate how this play explicitly criticized this discourse in an immediate and reckless manner, and to reveal its hidden layers. This research primarily focuses on the definition and analysis of the cultural discourse of the American dream and the emergence and domination of this meta-narrative work. It then examines its representation in True West play. The data collection of this paper has been done by the library-based studies.