A Darwinian Literary Analysis of Buried Child by Sam Shepard - Research Paper Example

 A Darwinian Literary Analysis of “Buried Child” by Sam Shepard “ Same eyes, same mouth, same breath!” The inescapable labyrinth of heritage, family, traditions and one’s own inner fatalistic tendencies that keep one’s wings to the ground though one desperately wants to fly! When Vince, the youthful musician who came back in search of his roots resigned to his destiny with the words quoted above, they became a land mark in the literary space occupied by the play, ‘The Buried Child’, written by Sam Shepard. Because this was the common destiny shared by human kind, more so by our modern society iconised in popular terminologies like the ‘American Dream’. What the play depicts is just the reverse of that dream and a story of maladaptation to that dream. Literary Darwinism, as a new stream of literary criticism has always stressed the assumption that “literature and other arts have an adaptive function” in human society (Carroll, p.1 in introduction). Sam Shepard was also in a sense, adapting the stark realities of the life of lower classes in Western America to the blown up picture of the Great American Dream through this play. The dilapidated farm house itself, in which the story is depicted, creates an ambience that foretells doom. Every character that is introduced adds on to this fragmented existence and a once hopeful past and a distress-ridden present unreveals slowly. According to Charles Darwin, who formulated the theory of evolution, as quoted by Carroll (p.1 in introduction), “evolution including human evolution, develops toward no specific goal, and the values of any given culture are relative to a specific adaptive situation.” ‘Buried child’ is about certain values within a certain social ambience. The plot of the play unfolds around a feared secret that every member of the family wants to leave undisclosed even at the cost of the decay of the family itself. The secret is nothing else than the incestuous act of the mother and her son together in which she gave birth to her son’s child. Thus the play becomes an allegory of how the departure from the value system in a given social ambience makes people lose their adaptive edge as well. The narrative of the play instruct the viewer about the consequences of maladaption, nurture altruism even amidst mutual distrust and in the end, promote social and moral values that will generate responsible, caring parents and encourages pair bonding by imparting negative examples (Belsey, 117). Darwinian literary criticism follows the Darwinian evolutionary theory that within the universal, nature always explores deep into the individual. ‘Buried Child’ also delves deep inside the individual variations of American male by showcasing Dodge, Tilden, Bradley and Vince who are essentially the same deep inside but are different in their out ward expressions. Only Vince who had in some aspects managed to leave his past behind and acclimatize to his environs is presented as the future of the family. As Dover (96) has called it, the “Darwinian world of ever changing individual entities” is what unfold here. In the ‘Descent of Man’, the three main social qualities pointed out by Darwin (113) are, “sympathy, fidelity and courage”. He states that these social qualities are acquired by humans through natural selection and complemented by sexual selection, which is a part of the nature’s urge for reproductive efficiency (Darwin, 113-114). So what we consider universal values (like sympathy) are to be understood as only some among the many human motives that help us to continue an adaptive living. Carroll (10) reminds us that these values are often over ridden under stimuli like fear, desire or even conformism. In ‘Buried Child’, first, the values are surpassed by desire and then the adaptive skills are totally lost caused by emotions like fear and conformism. The relative realm in which literary Darwinism places human values, gives the author enough freedom to handle an issue like incest in a non-judgmental way. Here, the guilt of incest is not borne alone by the individuals involved, but the whole system submits to it and draws even people who happen to enter into the system from outside into its abyss. Thus the guilt becomes collective just like the collective memories of humanity. Character analysis of the play converges in several aspects with the adaptionist psychology aspect of Darwinian literary criticism. Sex differences, mating strategies, family dynamics, social life, and emotions connected to them underlie the actions and reactions of almost all characters. The three human motives listed out by Darwin are present through out the play as the leading emotions. Halie and Shelley are driven by impulses of sympathy when they connect with Dodge. Shelley also feels this sympathy for the whole system which she had earlier dreamed as some thing more pleasant and meaningful. Halie’s memories about Tilden being a foot ball player and a successful male and also of her dead younger son, Ansel, who was a hero (a basket-ball player and soldier typically suiting the American Dream) in her mind, reminds the viewer how valor and courage are admired in any given human society. This is also because, from a psycho-social and evolutionary view point, these qualities ensure the survival of the race. Infidelity of Halie is the third omnipresent factor. The danger of violating the moral code of pair bonding is depicted through the degraded state of the children in the family. The symbolism expressed through corn, sunshine and rain if studied under cognitive neuro-science can reveal how the usually positive meanings attributed to these symbols could be reversed here without creating confusion in meaning. The primary meanings of these symbols stay intact in the minds of readers while their minds are led to work on the copies of these mind images to produce altered meanings. The play reminds that every meaning is also inevitably meaning for someone (Wells and McFadden, 77). The different strong and adamant points of view delivered in the play and also the range of subjective readings possible in the minds of each viewer can be explained in relation to the scientific theories of mind and the creation of literary meaning. Here, it is sufficient to note that the play offers a wide range of points of view. There is also another aspect to this as expressed by Abrams and Harpham (68) when they remarked, “the basic activities of writing and reading literary works contribute to the adaptive fitness for survival of the human organism by developing useful patterns of response, mapping out social relations, depicting intimate kin relation ships, clarifying our understanding of our fundamental nature, and in general, helping us to make sense of the environing world”. For Sam Shepard, this partially autobiographical play was in many ways an attempt to fit into his own memories and experienced past. His grand father had a farm house, his father was an alcaholic, one of his uncle’s had a wooden leg after an accident and another uncle had died in a motel on his wedding night (Potter, 3). Shepard himself has admitted to this. He said, “ I always did feel a part of that tradition, but hated it. I couldn’t stand those plays that were all about the turmoil of the family. And then I realized, that was very much part of my life, and may be that has to do with being a playwright, that you are some how snared beyond yourself” (Shepard, 194). So through his writing, Shepard was finding a way to adapt to his own inner conflicts. The farm had stopped producing crops at the time when the child was buried. This implies certain inevitable link between the productivity of nature and productivity of human species in a symbolic way. Dodge is found always on the sofa in the visiting room and this sofa represents the power that he commands as the father of the house. But he is no more in the capacity to exercise that power, not even in maintaining morally approved reproductive relations within the family. Dodge was shattered and old, Tilden was devastated by his act of incest, Bradley was physically handicapped; and hence Dodge and Halie always lament the lack of a real man in the family. The continuation of the family was in peril and this directly fits into the sexual selection theory that has been elaborated upon by Darwinian literary critics. The progress of human race through sexual selection was hindered by the circumstances and all the relations that existed were totally maladaptive. Carroll (p.15 in introduction) while examining literary Darwinist thought, has observed that “romantic and Christian conceptions of the autonomous power and quasi-spiritual significance of literary imagination” has dominated literary criticism during the period of 1930s to 1970s and the only alternatives available for them were Marxist and Freudian theory. Carroll (15, introduction) also added that the poststructuralist thought that succeeded these theories, though inverted the existing critical thinking towards harmony and resolution, it “ perpetuated …new critical doctrines on the hermetic autonomy of the textual universe”. Shepard’s this particular work though invites a lot of ‘text’ reading, moves beyond and ends with a suggestion of nature coming its full cycle, Vince taking over as the head of the family, nature blooming fresh under the rain and sunlight and the family relieved of its suffocating secret which is dug out and brought to open sunlight. Thus, however depressing it may be in the beginning, a voyage towards harmony is started; a voyage, which bases itself on, the nature’s urge for infinite experimentation and not the values held high by humans. Works Cited Abram, Meyer Howard and Harpham, Geoffrey Galt, A Glossary of Literary Terms, Cengage Learning, 2009. 68. Belsey, Catherine, Biology and Imagination: The Role of Culture, In Human Nature: Fact and Fiction, Robin Headlam Wells and Johnjoe McFadden, London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006. 117. Carroll, Joseph, Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature and Literature, London: Routledge, 2004. 1-10 Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man, Forgotten Books, 2007.113-114. Dover, Gabriel, ‘Human Nature: One for All and All for One?’, In Human Nature: Fact \ and Fiction, Robin Headlam Wells and Johnjoe McFadden, London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006. 96. Mells, Robin Headlam and McFadden, Johnjoe, Human Nature: Fact and Fiction, Continuum International Publishing Group. 77. Potter, Samantha, “ Buried Child: Sam Shepard’s Ferocious Comedy”, National Theatre Education Work pack, 2004. 08 January 2010, www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/download.php?id=4431.3. Shepard, Sam, Buried Child, New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1997. Shepard, Sam, “Curse of the Starving Class”, in Sam Shepard: Seven Plays, London: Faber and Faber, 1985. 194. Read More