Buried Child by Sam Shepard

First published: 1979, in “Buried Child” and “Seduced” and “Suicide in B Flat”

First produced: 1978, at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco

Type of plot: Psychological

Time of work: The 1970’s

Locale: A small Midwestern farm

Principal Characters:

• Dodge, in his seventies
• Halie, his wife, in her mid-sixties
• Tilden, their oldest son
• Bradley, their next-oldest son, an amputee
• Vince, Tilden’s son, about twenty-two
• Shelly, Vince’s girlfriend
• Father Dewis, a Protestant minister

The Play

Buried Child begins with a darkened stage, gradually brightened by the light from an upright lamp and a large, old-fashioned television set, which gives off a flickering blue light but no image or sound. The light reveals Dodge, sitting on a worn-out sofa, dressed in an old tee shirt, khaki work pants, and brown slippers, covered by an old brown blanket. Next to the sofa is the lamp and a small night table with several bottles of pills on it. Dodge, thin and sickly-looking, stares at the television as more light fills the stage. It is day, and there is the sound of light rain. Behind the sofa is a large, screened-in porch. An old wooden staircase with frayed carpeting on the steps leads up and offstage. A screen door leads from the porch to the outside, a solid interior door leads to the kitchen (offstage). Dodge drinks from a bottle of whiskey hidden under a sofa cushion, then begins coughing, first quietly then more loudly. He stifles his coughing when his wife, Halie, calls from offstage upstairs.

The old couple bicker about several seemingly trivial topics, Halie remaining out of the audience’s view, until Dodge calls Tilden in, apparently only to irritate Halie, who does not want him disturbed. Tilden enters from the kitchen, his arms loaded with fresh ears of corn that he has picked “out in back.” Tilden is in his late forties, dressed in muddy construction boots, work pants, plaid shirt, and faded windbreaker. He is wet from the rain and has a burned-out expression. Dodge begins to argue with him, denying that any corn grows out back. Tilden stares at him, then walks slowly over to him and dumps all the corn into his lap. He exits to the kitchen as Dodge angrily pushes all the corn off his lap onto the floor and sneaks another drink. He hides the bottle quickly as Tilden returns with a milking stool and a pail and begins husking the corn, throwing the husks and silk onto the floor and dropping the cleaned ears into the pail. They talk allusively about Tilden’s past in New Mexico and argue about whether Dodge has whiskey hidden in the sofa cushions, an argument occasionally joined by Halie, who is still offstage. As the discussion turns to the other sons, Bradley and Ansel, Halie enters slowly from the top of the stairs.

Halie is dressed entirely in black, as if in mourning. She remains entirely absorbed in a monologue about her dead son Ansel as she descends and then wanders about the room, not noticing the two men or the corn until she finishes speaking. After arguing with and threatening them, she leaves to have lunch with Father Dewis. Dodge puts on a baseball cap as protection against Bradley shaving his head (as he has apparently done before), then takes some pills and falls asleep on the couch. Tilden pulls the whiskey from under the cushion, takes a long drink, and puts the bottle in his pocket. He gathers the corn husks and gently spreads them all over Dodge’s body, completely covering him except for his head, then exits to the kitchen.

Bradley appears on the porch and enters through the screen door. He is a big man with muscular arms and shoulders, wearing a gray sweatshirt, baggy dark pants, and black janitor’s shoes. His left leg is wooden, having been amputated above the knee, and he walks with an exaggerated, almost mechanical limp, accompanied by squeaking sounds of leather and metal from the harness and hinges of the false leg. Bradley takes an electric hair clipper from his pocket, knocks away some of the corn husks, and pulls off Dodge’s cap. He switches on the clippers and, as the lights dim slowly to black, cuts Dodge’s hair while he sleeps.

Act 2 opens on the same set, now at night. Dodge is still asleep on the sofa, with his hair cut extremely short, his scalp cut and bleeding in places. The corn, husks, pail, and stool have been removed. The lights come up as Shelly laughs offstage and she and Vince appear outside the porch and enter. Shelly is nineteen, beautiful, wearing tight jeans, high heels, a purple tee shirt, and a short rabbit fur coat. Her makeup is exaggerated and her black hair is curled. Vince, Tilden’s son, is about twenty-two, wears a plaid shirt, jeans, dark glasses, and cowboy boots, and carries a black saxophone case. Shelly laughs and giggles uncontrollably as they pause on the porch, Vince hesitating to enter after his absence of six years. They enter, and Vince sets down his saxophone case and goes up the stairs and offstage.

Shelly picks up Dodge’s cap, puts it on, takes it off, and then touches one of the cuts in his scalp, waking him abruptly. He snatches the cap away and puts it on. She nervously explains that they were stopping by on their way to New Mexico to see Tilden and calls for Vince. He descends and addresses Dodge as “Grandpa,” but Dodge seems not to recognize him. Dodge becomes argumentative and then insulting as they become more nervous and disoriented. He searches for the whiskey, fails to find it, and calls for Tilden. Tilden enters from the kitchen as before, this time with his arms full of carrots. He just stares at Vince and Shelly, showing no signs of recognition.

Dodge tries to persuade anyone to get him another bottle of whiskey. Tilden gives the carrots to Shelly, who stands there holding them while he goes back to the kitchen for a pail and knife. Vince tries to knock the carrots out of her arms, but she turns away, protecting them. Tilden returns with the stool, pail, and a knife, and Shelly sits and begins cutting the ends off the carrots, peeling them, and dropping them into the pail. Vince persists, unsuccessfully, in his attempts to get Dodge and Tilden to recognize him by reenacting former activities. Frustrated and confused, Vince takes some money and goes to buy Dodge some whiskey.

Shelly, Dodge, and Tilden talk disconnectedly about several topics, and Tilden takes her coat, begins caressing it, and tells her about a baby that Dodge killed and buried, an event that had been alluded to cryptically in act 1 by Dodge in speaking to Halie. Dodge becomes furious and tries to walk toward Tilden to stop him, but falls on the floor. The squeaking of Bradley’s leg is heard, and he enters by the porch. Bradley takes Shelly’s coat from Tilden and drives him out of the room. He makes Shelly open her mouth and puts his fingers into it; after a pause, he pulls them out. He crosses to Dodge, still on the floor, and drops the coat over him so that it covers his head. Bradley looks at Shelly and smiles as the lights black out.

Act 3 opens the next morning. The lights rise slowly to the sound of birds. The rain has stopped and the sun is out. The carrots, pail, and stool are gone. Bradley is asleep on the sofa under Dodge’s blanket, his wooden leg and its shoe leaning against the sofa. Dodge is sitting on the floor, propped up against the television, wearing his baseball cap and Shelly’s coat over his shoulders, weaker and more disoriented. Shelly enters from the kitchen with a cup of steaming broth on a saucer, which she offers to Dodge. He refuses it; she sits at the bottom of the stairs and drinks it. She has spent the night in Halie’s room and questions Dodge about the pictures in the room, especially about one of Halie, much younger, holding a baby and looking at it “like it didn’t even belong to her.”

Halie’s laugh is heard and she enters by the porch with Father Dewis. She is wearing a bright yellow dress and her arms are full of yellow roses. He is dressed in a traditional black suit and a white clerical collar and shirt. Both are slightly drunk and feeling giddy. Dodge pulls Shelly’s coat over his head as they enter. Halie whips the coat off and throws it over Bradley’s leg, then whips the blanket off Bradley and throws it on Dodge, who hides his head under it. Bradley wakes up and tries helplessly to reach the blanket as Shelly remains on the stairs and looks on. Halie gropes in Father Dewis’s pockets, finds a silver flask of whiskey, and drinks from it as she talks about Ansel and the past. She throws a rose gently onto Dodge’s blanket. It lands between his knees and stays there. Bradley pulls the blanket from Dodge and covers himself with it.

Shelly, who until now has been passive, suddenly throws the cup and saucer against the kitchen door, smashing them, and then grabs Bradley’s wooden leg and takes it away, clutching it to her chest “as though she’s kidnapped it.” She interrogates the family and finally draws from Dodge the story of the family secret. Six years after she and Dodge had stopped sleeping together, Halie got pregnant and had a baby boy. Dodge drowned it.

At this point Vince comes crashing through the screen porch door, tearing it off its hinges. He is drunk and sings as he takes empty booze bottles out of a bag and smashes them on the porch. Now all of the family members recognize Vince, but he fails to recognize them. Shelly drops the leg at the foot of the stairs and picks up the saxophone case to leave, but Vince pulls out a big hunting knife and cuts a hole in the porch screen over the sofa and climbs through it onto the sofa, knocking Bradley onto the floor. Dewis drops the roses beside the wooden leg and escorts Halie upstairs and offstage. Shelly goes out the door to the porch; Bradley crawls toward his wooden leg. As Dodge begins reciting his last will and testament, Vince strides around the room, taking possession. He keeps pushing the leg away from Bradley and carries the roses around, smelling them. Shelly sets the saxophone case inside through the hole in the screen and exits from the porch. Vince throws the leg after her and Bradley crawls offstage after it. Vince pulls the blanket off him as he goes. Dewis comes down and exits off the porch.

Vince watches them all leave, smells the roses, and turns to Dodge, who is now lying dead on the floor. Vince covers him with the blanket and sits on the sofa staring at him. After a long pause, he places the roses on Dodge’s chest, then lies on the sofa staring at the ceiling, his body in the same position as Dodge’s. Halie’s voice comes down the stairs, addressing Dodge, as the lights begin to dim almost imperceptibly. She sees corn out the back window—the fields are now full of crops, “like a paradise.” As Halie keeps talking offstage, Tilden appears from the porch, muddy from the knees and elbows down. He carries the corpse of a small child, largely consisting of bones wrapped in muddy, rotten cloth. As Halie’s voice continues and the lights fade, he climbs the stairs, never looking away from the corpse. She finishes her speech to Dodge as Tilden disappears above and the lights go black, talking about the rain and the crops out back: “It’s a miracle, Dodge. I’ve never seen a crop like this in my whole life. Maybe it’s the sun. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the sun.”

Dramatic Devices

Although the setting is scrupulously realistic, Sam Shepard relies on the symbolism of his props and actions as much as words to tell his stories, and the burying of Dodge under husks by Tilden both reenacts Dodge’s burying of the child (perhaps Tilden’s) and foreshadows Tilden’s exhumation of the child at the play’s end. Halie’s emotional estrangement from the rest of the family is as clear from her frequent delivery of her lines from offstage as it is from the lines themselves, and her entirely black mourning outfit further symbolizes the point that her family is dead to her, and perhaps has been since the sacrifice of the buried child. By extension, her appearance in the last act in bright yellow clothing with her arms full of yellow roses, emblems of passion, may be seen as an element of the movement toward hope at the end of the play. She does, however, leave the roses downstairs and finishes offstage (upstairs) where she began; the ending of the play is again ambivalent.

The struggle to transfer power from one generation to the next is also told visually, in images of castration: Bradley cutting off Dodge’s hair, Vince in turn taking away Bradley’s (phallic) leg. Dodge’s impotence had been anticipated by his position prone on the couch and his burial under the corn husks, Bradley’s by the amputation he had already suffered. The perversion of other natural emotional relations is similarly suggested through actions and properties—Tilden symbolically molesting Shelly as he strokes her fur coat, and Bradley symbolically raping her when he forces his fingers into her mouth, with Shelly then revenging herself by taking away Bradley’s leg. More generally, the darkness and rain of the first two acts are replaced by the bright sun of the final act (as Halie’s black dress has been replaced by yellow): As the rain has resulted in new growth, symbolic force is given to the suggestion that death will somehow always be replaced by new life.

The buried child is itself a powerful visual symbol, especially for an unprepared audience in a realistic production, when Tilden carries in the rotten shroud covered with mud at the end. Vince has just put the blanket over Dodge’s head and placed the roses on his chest, and this juxtaposition of an exhumation immediately following a funeral prepares the audience to see Vince in his role as the link between the two events. He is the “sun” (son) of Halie’s closing monologue, the risen son who will replace the buried child, and also the new father figure who will replace Dodge, having just taken Dodge’s original position on the couch.

Critical Context

Shepard has been called the first totally postmodern voice in American drama, largely because of the aggressively experimental nature of his early work, relying on collage and fantasy rather than straightforward narrative or coherent characterizations. Curse of the Starving Class (pb. 1976, pr. 1977) initiated a new direction in Shepard’s work, inaugurating a series of plays, including Buried Child, True West (pr. 1980, pb. 1981), Fool for Love (pr., pb. 1983), and A Lie of the Mind (pr. 1985, pb. 1986), concerned with explorations of domestic and family life—in contrast to his earlier focus on characters who were loners. Unlike the experimental variations on popular genres, such as science fiction, westerns, or rock operas, which typified the earlier plays, these works are, despite their sometimes expressionistic exaggerations, given realistic, even naturalistic settings and relatively realistic characters. Shepard had already confessed in 1974 that he would “like to try a whole different way of writing now, which is very stark and not so flashy and not full of a lot of mythic figures and everything, and try to scrape it down to the bone as much as possible.”

The relatively tight focus on a small family on a small farm in Buried Child can certainly be seen as an expression of Shepard’s new realistic and minimalist impulse. The realistic framework, however, always incorporates heavily symbolic actions and properties and a mythic reach in themes, and the contrast between the early and later works has often been emphasized at the expense of ignoring important continuities. The archetypes and mythic figures of the earlier plays have been worked into more extended narrative structures without losing the several layers of symbolic meaning they carry. While critics have sometimes disagreed about the relative merits of the work of these two stages, the awarding of the 1979 Pulitzer Prize in drama for Buried Child suggests a consensus of opinion that this play is the most completely successful of the later period.

Sources for Further Study

Bigsby, C. W. E. “Sam Shepard.” In Beyond Broadway. Vol. 3 in A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Bottoms, Stephen J. The Theatre of Sam Shepard: States of Crisis. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Cima, Jay Gibson. Review of Buried Child. Theatre Journal 35 (December, 1983): 559-560.

Cohn, Ruby. “Sam Shepard: Today’s Passionate Shepard and His Loves.” In Essays on Contemporary American Drama, edited by Hedwig Bock and Albert Wertheim. Munich: M. Hueber, 1981.

Hart, Lynda. Sam Shepard’s Metaphorical Stages. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987.

King, Kimball. Sam Shepard: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1988.

McKellan, Kathleen. Review of Buried Child. Theatre Journal 48 (May, 1996): 225-226.

Marranca, Bonnie, ed. American Dreams: The Imagination of Sam Shepard. New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1981.

Perry, Frederick J. A Reconstruction Analysis of “Buried Child” by Playwright Sam Shepard. Lewistown, N.Y.: Mellen, 1992.

Simard, Rodney. “Sam Shepard: Emotional Renegade.” In Postmodern Drama: Contemporary Playwrights in America and Britain. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984.