| Peer-Reviewed

Repair and Family Resilience in the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma: Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind

Received: 3 August 2023     Accepted: 22 August 2023     Published: 31 August 2023
Views:       Downloads:
Abstract

Sam Shepard’s family plays, such as Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love, are replete with absent fathers, haunted sons, and marginalized mothers and daughters, all are linked thematically in their examination of familial disintegration in a fractured society. As the conclusion of Shepard’s “family quintet,” A Lie of the Mind (1985) symbolizes a major break in Shepard’s career. The play not only addresses the fragmentation that results from domestic violence, gender conflict, and war trauma, but also explores individual repair and family resilience in the transgenerational transmission of trauma. It represents Shepard’s first clear move away from cultural determinism towards a genuine belief in the potential for personal transformation and the re-establishment of familial connections that are essential to building post-traumatic resilience. In light of the theories of transgenerational trauma and family resilience, this essay will examine the vulnerability and positive adaptation of some of the play’s main characters, who experience traumatic events and then develop effective ways to heal and recover. In the case of the play, Shepard criticizes American cultural heritage that is transmitted through successive generations, especially the Anglo-American cultural ideal of the “rugged individualism” and myths of “invulnerability” and “self-sufficiency,” advocating instead a relational view that emphasizes connectedness and interdependence with others.

Published in English Language, Literature & Culture (Volume 8, Issue 3)
DOI 10.11648/j.ellc.20230803.16
Page(s) 65-71
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Sam Shepard, A Lie of the Mind, Fragmentation, Transgenerational Trauma, Family Resilience

References
[1] Bigsby, C. W. E. (1985). A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama, Volume Three: Beyond Broadway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[2] Bottoms, Stephen J. (1998). The Theatre of Sam Shepard: States of Crisis. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Cott, Jonathan. (1986). “The Rolling Stone Interview: Sam Shepard.” Rolling Stone, 18, 166, 168, 170, 172, 198, 200.
[4] Crank, James A. (2012). Understanding Sam Shepard. Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press.
[5] Creedon, Emma. (2015). Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[6] DeRose, David J. (1993). “A Kind of Cavorting: Superpresence and Shepard’s Family Dramas.” Rereading Shepard: Contemporary Critical Essays on the Plays of Sam Shepard. Leonard Wilcox. (ed.), New York: St. Martin’s Press. 131-149.
[7] Falk, Florence. (1981). “Men Without Women: The Shepard Landscape.” American Dreams: The Imagination of Sam Shepard. Bonnie Marranca. (ed.), New York: PAJ Publications. 90-103.
[8] Faludi, Susan. (1999). Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. New York: William Morrow.
[9] Favorini, Attilio. (2008). Memory in Play: From Aeschylus to Sam Shepard. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[10] Fiedler, Leslie A. (1997). Love and Death in the American Novel. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press.
[11] Haedicke, Janet V. (1993). “ ‘A Population [and Theater] at Risk’: Battered Women in Henley’s Crimes of the Heart and Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind.” Modern Drama, 36 (1), 83-95.
[12] He, Chengzhou. (2018). “Trauma and Resilience in Literature: The Chinese One-Child Policy and Mo Yan’s Novel Wa (Frog).” Orbis Litterarum, 73 (5), 395-404.
[13] Herman, Judith. (2015). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. 3rd ed. New York: Basic Books.
[14] Heuvel, Mike Vanden. (2018). Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1970s. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
[15] Hirsch, Marianne. (1997). Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
[16] Hirsch, Marianne. (2012). The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press.
[17] Kane, Leslie. (2002). “Reflections of the Past in True West and A Lie of the Mind.” The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard. Matthew Roudané. (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 139-153.
[18] Lanier, Gregory W. (1991). “Two Opposite Animals: Structural Pairing in Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind.” Modern Drama, 34 (3), 410-421.
[19] McDonough, Carla J. (1997). Staging Masculinity: Male Identity in Contemporary American Drama. North Carolina: McFarland.
[20] McDonough, Carla J. (1995). “The Politics of Stage Space: Women and Male Identity in Sam Shepard’s Family Plays.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 9 (2), 65-83.
[21] Onega, Susana and Jean-Michel Ganteau. (2017). “Introduction.” Victimhood and Vulnerability in 21st Century Fiction. Jean-Michel Ganteau and Susana Onega. (eds.), London: Routledge. 1-18.
[22] Rosen, Carol. (2004). Sam Shepard: A “Poetic Rodeo.” London: Palgrave Macmillan.
[23] Roudané, Matthew. (2002). “Shepard on Shepard: An Interview.” The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard. Matthew Roudané. (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 64-80.
[24] Schwab, Gabriele. (2010). Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma. New York: Columbia University Press.
[25] Shepard, Sam. (1987). A Lie of the Mind and The War in Heaven. New York: New American Library.
[26] Skelton, Shannon Blake. (2016). The Late Work of Sam Shepard. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
[27] Streufert, Paul D. (2014). “Masculinity, Haunting and Twentieth-Century American Realism.” Theatre and Ghosts: Materiality, Performance and Modernity. Mary Luckhurst and Emilie Morin. (eds.), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 113-127.
[28] Taav, Michael. (2000). A Body Across the Map: The Father-Son Plays of Sam Shepard. New York: Peter Lang.
[29] Wade, Leslie A. (1997). Sam Shepard and the American Theatre. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
[30] Walsh, Froma. (2016). Strengthening Family Resilience. 3rd ed. New York: The Guilford Press.
[31] Walsh, Froma. (2016). “Family Resilience: A Developmental Systems Framework.” European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13 (3), 313-324.
[32] Weiss, Katherine. (2007). “Exploding Bombs: Masculinity and War Trauma in Sam Shepard’s Drama.” New England Theatre Journal, (18), 77-93.
[33] Winters, John J. (2017). Sam Shepard: A Life. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint.
Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Guo Jiabin. (2023). Repair and Family Resilience in the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma: Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind. English Language, Literature & Culture, 8(3), 65-71. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20230803.16

    Copy | Download

    ACS Style

    Guo Jiabin. Repair and Family Resilience in the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma: Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind. Engl. Lang. Lit. Cult. 2023, 8(3), 65-71. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20230803.16

    Copy | Download

    AMA Style

    Guo Jiabin. Repair and Family Resilience in the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma: Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind. Engl Lang Lit Cult. 2023;8(3):65-71. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20230803.16

    Copy | Download

  • @article{10.11648/j.ellc.20230803.16,
      author = {Guo Jiabin},
      title = {Repair and Family Resilience in the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma: Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind},
      journal = {English Language, Literature & Culture},
      volume = {8},
      number = {3},
      pages = {65-71},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ellc.20230803.16},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20230803.16},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ellc.20230803.16},
      abstract = {Sam Shepard’s family plays, such as Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love, are replete with absent fathers, haunted sons, and marginalized mothers and daughters, all are linked thematically in their examination of familial disintegration in a fractured society. As the conclusion of Shepard’s “family quintet,” A Lie of the Mind (1985) symbolizes a major break in Shepard’s career. The play not only addresses the fragmentation that results from domestic violence, gender conflict, and war trauma, but also explores individual repair and family resilience in the transgenerational transmission of trauma. It represents Shepard’s first clear move away from cultural determinism towards a genuine belief in the potential for personal transformation and the re-establishment of familial connections that are essential to building post-traumatic resilience. In light of the theories of transgenerational trauma and family resilience, this essay will examine the vulnerability and positive adaptation of some of the play’s main characters, who experience traumatic events and then develop effective ways to heal and recover. In the case of the play, Shepard criticizes American cultural heritage that is transmitted through successive generations, especially the Anglo-American cultural ideal of the “rugged individualism” and myths of “invulnerability” and “self-sufficiency,” advocating instead a relational view that emphasizes connectedness and interdependence with others.},
     year = {2023}
    }
    

    Copy | Download

  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Repair and Family Resilience in the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma: Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind
    AU  - Guo Jiabin
    Y1  - 2023/08/31
    PY  - 2023
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20230803.16
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ellc.20230803.16
    T2  - English Language, Literature & Culture
    JF  - English Language, Literature & Culture
    JO  - English Language, Literature & Culture
    SP  - 65
    EP  - 71
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2575-2413
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20230803.16
    AB  - Sam Shepard’s family plays, such as Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love, are replete with absent fathers, haunted sons, and marginalized mothers and daughters, all are linked thematically in their examination of familial disintegration in a fractured society. As the conclusion of Shepard’s “family quintet,” A Lie of the Mind (1985) symbolizes a major break in Shepard’s career. The play not only addresses the fragmentation that results from domestic violence, gender conflict, and war trauma, but also explores individual repair and family resilience in the transgenerational transmission of trauma. It represents Shepard’s first clear move away from cultural determinism towards a genuine belief in the potential for personal transformation and the re-establishment of familial connections that are essential to building post-traumatic resilience. In light of the theories of transgenerational trauma and family resilience, this essay will examine the vulnerability and positive adaptation of some of the play’s main characters, who experience traumatic events and then develop effective ways to heal and recover. In the case of the play, Shepard criticizes American cultural heritage that is transmitted through successive generations, especially the Anglo-American cultural ideal of the “rugged individualism” and myths of “invulnerability” and “self-sufficiency,” advocating instead a relational view that emphasizes connectedness and interdependence with others.
    VL  - 8
    IS  - 3
    ER  - 

    Copy | Download

Author Information
  • School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

  • Sections