An Analysis Of Trans-generational Traumaand Its Impact In Sam Shepard’s Family Trilogy

Sam Shepard(1943-2017),being one of the most prestigious playwrights in America in the 1970 s,is respectfully referred to as “the most successful playwright of off-off Broadway.” His family trilogy,consisted of three plays respectively entitled:Curse of the Starving Class,Buried Child,and True West,uncovers the dysfunctional contemporary American family.This thesis intends to investigate the manifestations of the trans-generational trauma and its impact on the spirituality,psychology and personality of the characters in the same generation or cross-generations in light of trans-generational trauma theory.The morbid conditions of the family are the result of the family trauma transmitted from one generation to the next,whose impact is so overwhelmingly strong that the family members barely can pull themselves together to recover from it,even though different countermeasures have been adopted.The paper is divided into five parts.The first part is the introduction to Sam Shepard and the family trilogy as well as the theory of trans-generational trauma.The second part demonstrates the phenomena of the trans-generational trauma in the family members,namely,the fetish for the outside in Curse of the Starving Class,the illness of mourning in Buried Child and the role reversal in True West.The third part analyzes the impact of trans-generational trauma on the characters,involving the spiritual transformation of the two generations in Curse of the Starving Class,the psychological split of the three generations in Buried Child,and the psychopathic shift in personality of the same generation in True West.And the fourth part probes into the countermeasures the family members adopt in tackling the trans-generational trauma,containing braving the family curse in Curse of the Starving Class,re-experiencing the traumatic past in Buried Child and re-writing the west in True West.The last part is the conclusion.Through presenting the familial trauma and its psychological impact on the characters,the intention of Sam Shepard in writing these plays to call for people’s awareness to the familial trauma that can be transmitted from among generations is revealed.Yet it’s hard to get rid of it.