True West: Analysis of Major Characters
"True West: Analysis of Major Characters" examines the complex relationships and contrasting personalities of two brothers, Austin and Lee, within the framework of a chaotic family dynamic. Austin, an aspiring screenwriter, embodies the values of education and middle-class respectability but becomes increasingly insecure and desperate as his brother Lee intrudes upon his life. Lee, the older brother, is a rugged and menacing figure, representing a raw, unrefined existence that challenges Austin's conventional lifestyle. Their rivalry escalates, ultimately leading Austin to adopt Lee's destructive behavior in a bid for identity and creativity.
The analysis also includes Saul Kimmer, a superficial Hollywood producer whose moral ambiguity aligns with Lee's manipulative tendencies, further complicating the brothers' struggles. Lastly, their mother, referred to simply as "Mom," appears detached and oblivious to the turmoil in her home, highlighting a disconnect between her artistic aspirations and the reality of her sons' conflict. Together, these characters create a rich tapestry exploring themes of identity, envy, and the clash between civilization and primal instincts, inviting deeper reflection on familial bonds and personal ambition.
True West: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Sam Shepard
First published: 1981, in Seven Plays
Genre: Play
Locale: A suburb forty miles east of Los Angeles
Plot: Psychological
Time: The 1980's
Austin, a self-deprecating but aspiring screenwriter in his early thirties. Somewhat romantic, he works by candlelight in his vacationing mother's house, creating a “simple love story” to complete a film deal with producer Saul Kimmer, toward whom he is respectful and sycophantic. Conventionally educated at an Ivy League college, Austin inhabits a neat world constructed of middle-class values of rationality, self-discipline, and hard work. This world is threatened by the arrival of his brother Lee, the object of Austin's sibling envy and repressed hostility. As Lee insinuates himself into Austin's territory, Austin becomes increasingly insecure. Adopting Lee's behavior, speech, and profession in a complete character transformation, he abandons his film project and becomes roaring drunk, thereby unleashing an inventiveness previously stifled by his intellectuality. With a burst of bravado, he steals every toaster in the neighborhood in an attempt to outperform Lee's nefarious activities. Now uncertain of his identity and believing himself unable to exist in modern society, he bargains to return to the desert with Lee. When Lee reneges on the promise, Austin's civilized veneer shatters, exposing a murderous violence beneath.
Lee, Austin's menacing older brother. He is in his forties and scruffily dressed. He has just returned from several months of nomadic existence in the desert with only a pit bull dog for company. Austin's opposite, he is a natural man, lacking education and goals. Lee is without visible morality or scruples (except in the matter of their absent father), but his behavior reveals a jealousy of his brother's lifestyle; he systematically usurps Austin's time, space, and identity. He is not without insight, and he possesses an imagination unfettered by education, but he lacks discipline and cannot tolerate frustration. What he wants he takes, whether it be a neighbor's television set, Austin's car, or, ultimately, Austin's work, as he gambles with Saul Kimmer for the acceptance of his scenario in preference to his brother's. When he discovers that he lacks the skills necessary to transform his imaginative ideas into art, or his lifestyle into one of legitimacy, he becomes destructive.
Saul Kimmer, a Hollywood producer in his late forties. Shallow and superficial, dressed in loud flowered shirts and polyester pants, he is a caricature of the Hollywood parasite who, lacking talent himself, survives by marketing the talents of others. His amorality matches Lee's; he is seduced by Lee's manipulations and rejects Austin's script without a qualm. Lee's insistence on calling him “Mr. Kipper” labels him accurately as a cold fish.
Mom, a woman in her sixties, the mother of the two brothers. Mom is characterized by Lee as not liking “even a single tea leaf in her sink,” but she is strangely indifferent to the destruction of her home and plants when she returns suddenly in the last scene from her vacation in Alaska. More concerned about what she has interpreted as a visit of Picasso to the local museum than about the primal contest occurring before her eyes, she seems unable to grasp the fact that Picasso is dead, and she is blind to her sons' hatred, thus displaying an inability to distinguish life from art.